Status: 07/06/2021 6:55 p.m.
The “Corona heroes” in the supermarkets should get more money quickly, but not the staff in long-term fashion stores for the time being. The trade association recommended that. The ver.di union reacts indignantly.
The collective bargaining dispute in the retail sector is getting worse. The German Retail Association (HDE) has recommended retailers who have coped well with the Corona crisis to voluntarily increase the wages of their employees by two percent before a collective bargaining agreement. In addition, there is the option of a one-off payment, which for full-time employees can be 300 euros. This initiative caused outrage at the ver.di union.
Some retail chains want to raise wages in advance
According to the HDE, several large retail chains such as Ikea, Otto, Rewe, Penny and regional companies of the Edeka group with their collective bargaining branches have already made a binding declaration that they want to implement the voluntary pay increase.
While some of the retail companies got through the pandemic well, another part suffered massively from months of lockdown and business restrictions, said HDE managing director Steven Haarke. The former could carry a tariff increase that could be implemented at short notice, the latter would have to be protected from cost burdens. Above all, the non-systemically relevant non-food trade is still suffering heavily from the Corona crisis. The union must understand that.
According to the plans of the employers, the wage increases agreed in the collective bargaining will not take effect until much later in the harder-hit companies. In the course of the summer, “a differentiated collective agreement for the entire industry can be negotiated with the necessary objectivity and calm,” said Haarke.
HDE: “No lasting consequences”
The HDE managing director solicited approval: at the end of a possibly extended term, all permanent remuneration components of the deal would be the same for all dealers. “This would only result in a time-limited differentiation for the effects of the respective tariff year,” he explained. So it is about short-term relief that would have no lasting consequences for wages in the industry.
Ver.di: “Slap in the face of colleagues”
Ver.di reacted angrily: “With this, the HDE is intensifying the tariff conflict in the retail and mail order business and further complicating the already complicated negotiations,” said Orhan Akman, the ver.di federal specialist group leader for retail. The HDE apparently has no interest in a speedy collective agreement with real wage increases. Instead, the employees should be fobbed off cheaply.
The previous offer by employers is below the inflation rate forecast for 2021 and is “a slap in the face of colleagues who have put their health at risk every day to ensure the supply of the population”.
Ver.di calls for a flat rate increase of 4.5 percent. Because employees in the companies hard hit by the crisis needed more money. They were often affected by short-time working and lost a lot of their income in the pandemic.
Big economic differences
Because of the corona pandemic, collective bargaining in retail with its more than three million employees is particularly complicated. Because there are much greater differences in the economic situation of retailers than usual. While grocers, for example, were among the winners of the crisis and recorded enormous increases in sales during the pandemic, sales in the fashion trade collapsed due to corona-related shop closings.
The collective bargaining parties in retail have been struggling unsuccessfully for a solution for months. The ver.di union had called for protests several times.