IG Metall - SIEMENS New Collective Agreement valid for the 37 regional subsidiaries dealing with sales & distribution and maintenance & repair

WARNING!! -- Some newspapers - may be even throughout Europe - reported, that IG Metall agreed to a 37-hour working week within some sub-companies of the SIEMENS company. That is wrong. The main contents of the agreement reached a few days ago are described in the following report:

1. IG Metall and Siemens signed a separate agreement for the employees of 37 regional subsidiaries which deal with sales & distribution and maintenance & repair. Approximately 8000 employees in sales & distribution and 12000 employees in maintenance & repair are covered by this contract. (To remind you: The whole workforce of the Siemens Company in Germany amounts to about 160.000).

2. Safeguarding Employment The newly signed contract becomes effective on 1st of April 2005 and is valid until 30th of September 2009. Siemens committed itself to safeguard employment during that period and abstain form closing down subsidiaries during that period of time.

2. Working Time: 35,8 Hours per Week - just like in the old contract. The new contract stipulates a 35,8 hours working week which must be reached at an annual average. That means, there can be fluctuations around that figure but those must be levelled at an average of a 35,8 hour working week on an annual basis.

The new contract allows the same amount of working hours as the old did. Why? Formerly worked 18 per cent of the workforce 40 hours and 82 per cent of the work force 35 hours. (To remind you: The option of having a 40 hour week for up to 18 per cent of the work force was stipulated in the old and original contract about the 35-hours week.) Now, all employees work 35,8 hours - that’s exactly the mathematical outcome if you distribute the amount of the working hours of the 18 per cent among the whole workforce.

3. Training - up to 50 hours a year, but unpaid This point contains two aspects: (1) Each employee has the right to apply for an individual training measure. Individual employee, works council and the company talk and negotiate about that and have to come to a conclusion. The employee gets time off for qualification but without pay. - (2) The company - after talks with the works councils - starts a training program. In this case each individual has to take part and to bring in up to 50 hours per year without getting paid for those 50 hours.

4. Transforming Christmas bonus and holiday pay into performance- and profit-related pay.

Instead of Christmas bonus and holiday pay the employees will get a performance- and profit-related extra pay.

5. Re-integrating the service subsidiaries again into SIEMENS AG All service subsidiaries will be reintegrated into the mother-company SIEMENS AG.