Report on the successful conclusion of the annual bargaining round in Austria.

Successful conclusion of collective bargaining round in Austrian metalworking

After long and tedious negotiations throughout the night on 2 November 2006 our joint unions´ negotiating team finally succeeded in thrashing out with the employers a new collective agreement for some 161.000 employees in the Austrian metalworking and mining industries. Altogether, it took 4 rounds of negotiations, hundreds of company rallies and regional works council conferences and a total of 40 hours of negotiations to conclude this year´ s bargaining round.

Employers´ demands for far reaching wage and working time flexibility

As already reported earlier, the positions of the negotiating partners remained too far apart right from the start of the bargaining round with the employers demanding that additional pay beyond compensating for the inflation rate is provided only when the respective company yields profit. Moreover, a maximum bonus threshold of 1% of the employees´ total annual wages should be established. In addition, they reiterated their long standing demand for relaxing working time regulations.

Threats of withdrawal from the negotiations by employers´ sub sector representatives

Moreover, the employers of the largest sub sector unit in the metalworking sector, the mechanical engineering and metal goods´ association, threatened several times to withdraw from the employers´ negotiating team in order to prevent pay increases close to 3%.

Thanks to the solidarity and nation-wide support , expressed by our works councils and members in over 500 company rallies, the new collective agreement will cover the employees of all sub sectors in the metalworking sector and provide the following results:

Results in detail:

Pay

· Increases of both minimum wages/salaries and effective wages/salaries by 2,6%

· The new monthly minimum wages thus stand now at € 1.353,58

· Increases of apprentices´ remunerations by 2,6 %

· Increases of additional payments (reimbursements) by 1,5%

Additional one-off payment

· An extra one-off payment of 100€ to be paid additionally in March 2007; including the provision that badly performing companies, with a negative operative result during the accounting period between August 1, 2005 and July 31, 2006 will be exempted from paying this additional one-off payment

Distribution option

· a works agreement between management and works council can allow for an individual distribution of 2,9% of the total company´ s pay bill. In this case the across-the-board rise of wages has to be not lower than 2,4%, permitting to distribute an additional 0,5% rise to designated lower-income groups within the company, favouring in particular women. An agreement on a distribution option has to be concluded not later than 22 December 2006

Non-pay issues

· On the issue of paid training leave our negotiating team was not able to reach an agreement with the employer during this bargaining round. However, this will by no way frustrate our efforts to pursue this highly important issue during coming negotiations.

· Further improvements of legal framework conditions, including extension of expiry dates for claiming overdue overtime payment, additional payment, etc. from 4 months to 6 months and crediting of 22 months of parental leave for continued pay during sickness, holidays, periods of notice, anniversary bonus;

The new collective agreement will take effect from 1 November 2006.

Collectively agreed pay increases in metalworking industry 2002-2006