IG Metall has increased the pressure on employers in Mainfranken with further warning strikes. According to the union, almost 1,500 employees took part in the wage dispute on Friday. Works in Marktheidenfeld, Würzburg and Kitzingen were affected.
After an initial wave of protests last week and this week, IG Metall does not want to give up. She announced further warning strikes in the coming days. Then it will be about Koenig & Bauer in Würzburg, Schaeffler in Kitzingen and Bosch Rexroth in neighboring Volkach.
“The employers have miscalculated.”
Johann Horn, IG Metall–
A human chain in Marktheidenfeld was the most noticeable event on Friday. Norbert Zirnsak, second authorized representative of IG Metall Würzburg, spoke of a “great signal”. According to the union, 800 employees from Warema and Procter & Gamble took part in their warning strike and thus provided a tailwind for the ongoing collective bargaining. “All the machines in both plants are at a standstill,” Zirnsak shouted to the employees, who went into the weekend early for an hour at noon and formed a human chain in front of the plant gates.
In times of corona, a strike also has its own rules. Only 180 employees had been approved for the human chain in front of the factory gates. IG Metall had distributed rulers to the strikers so that the rules of distance were observed. This was taken into account.
“The employers have miscalculated,” shouted Johann Horn into the microphone, who is IG Metall’s district manager and IG Metall negotiator in the ongoing collective bargaining negotiations. Employers believed that you could do anything with employees in the Corona crisis. He wants to fight for four percent more wages for employees with a term of twelve months? also in the companies in which there is a crisis, in order to compensate for the loss of wages. In addition, the trainees should have a secure perspective.
The works council chairman of Procter & Gamble, Helmut Hauptmann, attacked the company. “The companies are doing well,” he said. Therefore, the employer’s offer is anti-social. The employers would have to move, it sounded from the loudspeaker, so that Angelique Renkhoff-Mücke could also hear this. The Warema company director is also the negotiator for the Bavarian metal and electronics industry.
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Alexander Thauer, Chairman of the Works Council at Warema, was also combative. “It’s about our future,” he said. The employees showed themselves to be very flexible in the Corona crisis and achieved a lot. This must be rewarded. Thauer criticized that a possible tax-free corona aid at the Warema company had only been paid out to a small extent.
For the second time within a week, employees from the Brose plant in Würzburg took part in the warning strikes on Friday. According to IG Metall, the morning shift at noon started the weekend two hours earlier than usual. According to the information, 600 employees took part.
The plant manufacturer Baumüller was hit in Kitzingen. There the union counted 80 workers who, depending on the start of the shift, also left work two hours earlier. “The participation in the warning strike of a good 80 percent shows that the workforce is behind the demands of IG Metall”, works council chairman Martin Konnerth is quoted in a statement from IG Metall.
The wave of warning strikes began last week after collective bargaining in the Bavarian metal and electrical industry stalled and the mandatory peace obligation had come to an end. Last Thursday alone, according to IG Metall, 12,000 employees from 55 companies went on a warning strike, including 250 at Konecranes in Würzburg.
The Bavarian employers’ association vbm had criticized the actions of the union at the beginning of the week. He described it as “disproportionate publicity in difficult times”.
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