agreement
“Bridge collective agreement” for the chemical and pharmaceutical industries
For around 580,000 employees in the German chemical and pharmaceutical industry, there is initially only a partial qualification. Photo: Jan Woitas/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
The union had demanded wage increases above inflation, but then came the war in Ukraine. He turned collective bargaining for the chemical industry upside down.
The war in Ukraine also overshadowed collective bargaining for around 580,000 employees in the German chemical and pharmaceutical industry.
In view of economic risks, expensive energy and a possible stop in Russian gas deliveries, the union and employers shied away from a collective agreement with permanent wage increases. On Tuesday, after the second round, they only agreed on a one-time payment of 1,400 euros. In October, the talks about table increases should continue, both sides announced in Wiesbaden. By then, it is hoped, the situation will be clearer.
“With the crisis bridge, we are giving companies and employees a much-needed breathing space,” said Hans Oberschulte, chief negotiator for the Federal Chemical Employers’ Association (BAVC). “This is the right answer to the maximum insecurity we’ve seen since Putin’s invasion.” Collective bargaining in the midst of such circumstances has never existed in the industry. Ralf Sikorski, negotiator for IG BCE, also described the situation as an “exceptional situation”. The compromise found is anything but the wishful thinking of the union, but buys time.
Specifically, the one-time payment of 1,400 euros is due in May at the latest, it is not permanently included in the tariff tables. In companies with economic difficulties, the payment can therefore be reduced to 1000 euros – for example in the event of a loss in 2021 or a low return on sales in the past or current year. According to the information, trainees should receive a one-off payment of 500 euros. The compromise applies to 1900 companies in the industry. The previous fee schedules will continue to apply unchanged until October.
According to the IG BCE, the one-time payment corresponds to an average increase of 5.3 percent across all salary groups. Lower wage groups benefited more than average from this, stressed the union chairman Michael Vassiliadis. “They are the ones who are particularly suffering from the current price hikes.”
In addition, IG BCE and BAVC agreed to set the surcharges for regular and irregular night shifts at a uniform 20 percent from July. So far, these have been 15 and 20 percent respectively. The IG BCE had demanded 25 percent here.
The chemical and pharmaceutical industry with corporations such as BASF, Bayer, Merck and Boehringer Ingelheim is the third largest industrial sector in Germany after car and mechanical engineering. According to the industry association VCI, it achieved record sales of 225 billion euros in 2021. However, the chemical industry in particular, which supplies customers in the automotive, construction, cosmetics and electronics sectors, is heavily dependent on the global economy. And with the war in Ukraine, the industry’s recovery from the corona pandemic suddenly collapsed. The rapidly increasing oil, electricity and gas prices are hitting the energy-intensive chemical and pharmaceutical industry hard.
In particular, should gas deliveries from Russia fail to materialize, that would be a nightmare scenario for the industry: it uses natural gas on a large scale as a raw material and to generate steam and electricity. The industry repeatedly warns that if energy stops flowing from Russia, the chemical plants will sooner or later come to a standstill.
The war in Ukraine had also made IG BCE’s wage demands untenable. It had originally demanded a wage increase above inflation. Since then, consumer prices in Germany have risen rapidly, the war has fueled energy prices – in March the inflation rate was 7.3 percent. Wage increases above that would have become an immense burden for employers.
“In this time of great uncertainty for employees and companies, we had to find a solution that combines inflation relief with job security,” said IG-BCE boss Vassiliadis.
Other topics faded into the background in the depressing situation, but are also important for the industry. The union and employers want to give special support to trainees with learning deficits caused by the pandemic, and a program worth three million euros is planned. Because in the chemical industry, the shortage of young specialists is locally considerable, especially in smaller companies. There should also be more flexibility for old-age leisure and company pension schemes should become more attractive via a new model.
But even the war in Ukraine should not deter the union from its plans, as Vassiliadis emphasized. “Our goal remains the permanent increase in fees this year.”