Collective bargaining in Austrian metal& mining sector deadlocked

In the night hours from 19 October to 20 October 2006 the third negotiating round for some 180.000 employees (out of it over 160.000 blue collar workers) in the Austrian metal and mining industry took place. As already reported earlier, on the trade unions´ side representatives from the blue-collar Metal-Textiles-Food Workers´ Union (GMTN) form a joint negotiating team with those of the white-collar Salaried Workers´ Union (GPA).

Following 12 hours of tough bargaining the round was broken off with any tangible result in sight. A new set of negotiation is scheduled to take place on 2 November 2006.

After 30 hours of bargaining and three rounds, the employers´ finally offered a meagre 2,3 percent pay increase and an additional not yet clearly defined one-off payment. Against the background of a further expanding metalworking industry , strongly benefiting from a record high increase in exports and a notably high productivity level, yielding ever increasing profits for the companies, our negotiating team rejected the last offer from the employers as not satisfactory.

At the beginning of the negotiations the employers had started a debate on introducing a flexible pay scheme, providing only compensation of the inflation rate and relating additional pay to the individual company´ s profitability . Later on they withdrew their demand .

Already after the interruption of the second bargaining round on 13 October 2006, GMTN and GPA had decided to inform the affected workforce in the metal industry about the negotiating process and organised works council conferences and company meetings all over Austria. At the moment, some hundred company meetings take place to support our negotiating team by adopting a resolution to be submitted to the employers´ negotiating team.

During the next negotiating round our negotiating team expects an offer from the employers´ side that clearly reflects the outstandingly good economic performance . If the parties fail to reach a conclusion of the bargaining round on 2 November 2006 due to the intransigent employers´ attitude, we will have company meetings to decide on eventual industrial action.
Manfred Anderle