IG Metall: in the vanguard of transformation

Membership and finances

IG Metall has 2.3 million members, 130,000 of whom joined in 2018. Furthermore, the membership has become more educated, more female and younger. IG Metall’s embeddedness in the workplace is indicated by recent works council elections, from which it emerged triumphant: hostile and populist candidates came away almost emptyhanded.

In 2018, revenues from union dues rose to almost €600m. ‘In financial terms we have real staying power.’ IG Metall is strengthening its reserves and investing a lot of money in modernising its 155 branch offices. It is putting money into training, concentrated in three areas. First, works councils and shop stewards as their ‘crack troops’ in enterprises, and secondly, women and young members, to whom they want to become more attractive. Thirdly, they are funding the reconstruction of the European Academy of Labour at the University of Frankfurt.

Collective bargaining

IG Metall’s negotiating position is undiminished. Wage rises for 2018 and 2019 amount to 4.3 per cent. The collective agreement also contains an annual supplementary allowance of 27.5 per cent of a month’s wages, which workers looking after children, caring for relatives or working shifts can convert into additional holidays. Other trade unions have agreed similar options. Furthermore, almost half a million workers have chosen the option of ‘more days off instead of money’.

Other trade unions have made similar agreements. Ver.di has implemented an average wage increase of 7.5 per cent for public workers up to 2020 and ensured that the monthly rise is at least €175. Deviating from the average skilled workers, on the one hand, public employees in lower income groups, on the other, will receive an above average raise. The aim of this differentiation is to boost the incentive for skilled workers to join the public service. This is in line with the aims of public employers who are able to recruit highly qualified workers only if they are able to offer them similar conditions to those in the private sector. The disproportionate rises in wages for lower income groups or for whole groups of employees, such as nurses, combine the aims of curbing wage dispersion with the trade union priority of boosting the appreciation of social sector employment. Ver.di has characterised the collective agreement as the best for many years.

Precarious work

IG Metall has agreed wage supplements for workers in temporary employment, which are to increase gradually over time and as they improve their qualifications. To take an example, in the intermediate pay category the hourly rate is €15.9, rising to €26.24 after 15 months. Other trade unions, such as Ver.di, are much more affected by precarious employment relationships in the private services sector. There have been spectacular and sometimes successful strikes in smaller sectors: cash/valuables-in-transit operators, airport security staff and staff at rehab clinics are only three examples of trade unions’ increased mobilising and negotiating clout in precarious sectors. It has become evident that the trade unions can stage well-organised strikes even in sectors that they find difficult to access.

Political arena

The trade unions have returned to the political arena since the tripartite cooperation in 2009 in response to the financial crisis. The DGB as central organisation and the sectoral trade unions, with their specific interests, played a key role in numerous commissions composed of representatives of the government, the economy, academia and civil society. These addressed four major topical areas:

Basic social security for low earners should be improved in relation to pensions and child rearing.

Transformation of the economy

Transformation of the economy into the ‘world of work of a global, digital and decarbonised industry’ (IG Metall) is increasingly moving centre-stage in trade union policy-making. IG Metall advocates that a ‘transformation atlas’ of the risks and opportunities of the new world of work should be produced for every enterprise: ‘We are the vanguard of transformation’. It remains to be seen whether IG Metall, which is particularly affected because of the crucial importance of the auto industry and mechanical engineering for the German economy, can live up to its claim to have a key role in shaping the industrial future. What appears to be emerging is close cooperation between IG Metall and its works councils with the auto manufacturers and their suppliers. Alongside this the federal government has made technological upheavals and labour market transformation central to its new industrial policy. The goal is to consolidate Germany’s status as industrial location of tomorrow.

But this enumeration of trade union successes should not be misunderstood. Germany is not a social paradise, far from it. It is important to note, however, that the trade unions have set out their stall to tackle social upheavals and the challenges of the future with their own resources. The conflictual partnership that the trade unions maintain with the employers and the government means two things. Conflicts can be ridden out thanks to a consolidated membership base and their involvement in wage disputes. And Partnership works because the unions’ collective bargaining alternatives are closely tailored to each workplace or group of employees and the individual interests of their members; and they managed to put these alternatives on the societal agenda.

They are moving in the right direction. At the European level, on the other hand, one finds the exact opposite. The trade unions are constantly calling on the EU to realise a Social Europe. But appeals are in vain when they are merely rhetorical while pan-European policies are lacking. And that indeed is the case because the trade unions have hitherto failed to develop a European strategy and enshrine it in a negotiating package. Although IG Metall has offices in the United States and Hungary aimed at fostering international solidarity along the supply chains of multinationals it remains a national trade union in terms of self-conception and interests. The gap is widening between an increasingly transnational capitalism and a trade union movement ever more hemmed in at national level. That is why it is encouraging to hear that at an IG Metall event Luc Triangle, secretary general of industriAll Europe, uttered the slogan ‘the future of trade unions is Europe’. A glance at the close economic and social links in the single market show how right he is. A Social Europe is the task of the trade unions, not of the EU.

Translation from the German by James Patterson