Wage round 2018 – IG Metall raises the stakes
Against the background of strong labour demand, attention will focus on the
upcoming wage negotiations in 2018. Wage agreements for roughly 9.7 million
workers or c. 30% of the total number of 32.5 million workers in regular jobs that
are subject to social security contributions are up for re-negotiation. In this
context, negotiations in the metals industry and the civil service play a key role.
The IG Metall trade union demands wage hikes of 6% for both regular workers
and apprentices and the introduction of a clause that will give workers the option
to reduce their working time to 28 hours per week for a maximum of 24 months.
In addition, the employers are to compensate their employees for part of the
resultant wage losses if certain conditions are met. The employers have offered
aggregated wage hikes of 2.35% in the second negotiation round, but are still
not willing to discuss a reduction of working hours. This suggests that wages will
be raised by slightly more than 3% in the end.
However, the employers will need
to improve their offer significantly if they want to get IG Metall to back down from
their call for a reduction of working hours in the upcoming wage round. Since
the remaining 60% of the aggregate number of employees are covered by wage
agreements that foresee wage hikes of considerably less than 3% in 2018,
overall wage growth should remain below 3%.
EU Forecast
euf:ba18h:99/nws-01