Report on the bargaining round in Austrian metalworking crafts sector

Bargaining round in metalworking crafts sector: one guild on the employers side refuses to join in the federally negotiated agreement.

On 19 November our union, the blue collar Metalworking and Textiles Union (GMT) managed to conclude a new collective agreement with the employers in the metalworking crafts sector, covering about 108.000 blue collar workers in nearly 15.000 craft enterprises.

Economic situation:

Economic experts forecast that the global economic boom will gradually spread to the Euro Area and to Austria. As already reported earlier in our report on the bargaing round in metalworking industry, Austrian economy is expected to grow by 1,9 percent (in 2003: 0,7%), the forecast for 2005 is 2,5 percent. In contrast, private household consumption remains subdued, as incomes are lagging behind and energy prices are high. The substantial increase in raw material prices is pushing up inflation: the forecast inflation rate is 2,1 percent for 2004 (in 2003: 1,3 percent). Productivity (GDP per employee) will be slightly rising to 1,2 percent from last year’ s 0,8 percent.

While Austrian manufacturing, in particular, the export orientedmetalworking sector has already been benefiting from first signs of economic upswing, the negotiating team of the employers nevertheless kept arguing that the situation in the metalworking crafts sector is not too rosy. However, our negotiating team relied on our own more optimistic assessment of the situation in the metalworking crafts sector.

Results:
Pay

• Increase in minimum wages by 2,5 percent

• Thus the new minimum wage stands now at € 1.272, 24

• Increase in effective wages by 2,5 percent

• Increase in apprentices’remunerations by 2,5 percent

• Equivalent rise in additional payments and reimbursements of expenses

• The new collective agreement is to take effect from 1 January 2005

By comparison, last year increases in minimum wages by 2,1% and in effective wages by 1,95% were achieved.

Working time
Under the new settlement, the hitherto yearly renegotiated collective agreement on „extended bandwidth“, providing for a flexible distribution of working time between 32 and 45 hours, was prolonged unterminably.

Sectoral coverage still incomplete When the new agreement was signed, three federal guilds of the Austrian Chamber of Economy (WKO hesitated to give their consent to the new sectoral agreement. Meanwhile, two of them, namely the provincial guild of mechatronics in the western province Voralberg and the federal guild of fitters, smiths and agricultural machinery technicians have signalled their willingness to join in the agreement.

Only one guild, the employers of the federal guild of electrical, communication and alarm system technicians, stalls and keeps refusing to accept the new sectoral agreement. As a result, over 31.000 blue collar workers in this subsector are left out in the cold and threatened to be deprived of the already agreed wage increases.

Talks with the federal guild of electrical, communication and alarm system technicians in December In an effort to make sure that all workers in the metalworking crafts sector will be covered by the new agreement, our union fixed a meeting with the employers of the stalling federal guild for 13 December 2004 to bring them in.

Our union has already started to inform works councils in the metalworking crafts sector about the inacceptable situation, surrounding the extension of the new sectoral agreement.
The international department of the GMT will report to you about the outcome of these negotiations.