In June 2002, the IG Metall trade union and the Arbeitgeberverband Stahl employers' association reached a new 15-month pay settlement for the 85,000 employees in the west German steel industry, providing for a 3.6% pay increase. The same agreement was later adopted for the 10,000 employees in the east German steel industry.
On 14 June 2002, the German Metalworkers' Union (IG Metall) and the Employers' Association for the Steel Industry (Arbeitgeberverband Stahl) signed a new pay agreement for the 85,000 or so employees in the west German steel industry, covering the collective bargaining districts of North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower-Saxony and Bremen.
The new pay agreement has a duration of 15 months (from June 2002 to August 2003) and provides for:
The agreement was reached after IG Metall had organised various protest rallies and warning strikes, with a total of over 20,000 employees participating. Initially, the union had demanded a 6.5% pay increase over 12 months and an increase in monthly apprenticeship allowances of EUR 77. The steel employers' first offer was a two-year pay agreement, providing for: two 'zero-months' with no pay increases; a 3.3% pay increase from August 2002 (of which 0.7% should be a flat-rate payment); and a further 3.3% pay increase from November 2003 (of which 0.5% should be a flat-rate payment).
The IG Metall chief negotiator and head of its North Rhine-Westphalia district organisation, Peter Gasse, said that 'the agreement reflects what was possible to reach at the negotiation table without further industrial action.' He emphasised that the relatively short duration of the agreement would give the union the opportunity to enter new pay negotiations from September 2003, possibly under much better economic framework conditions. There were, however, also several voices within IG Metall which criticised the agreed pay increase as too low and called at least for the same 4% pay increase which was recently agreed in metalworking (DE0205206F). After rather controversial debates, the IG Metall collective bargaining commission finally supported the new steel pay agreement, with 44 members voting in favor and 24 voting against.
The president of Arbeitgeberverband Stahl, Claus Hendricks, stated that the pay agreement had to be seen as a compromise, which was difficult to accept for both sides. According to Mr Hendricks, the collective bargaining parties were able 'to find a balance between the difficult current economic situation most steel companies are faced with and the expectations of the employees'.
On 19 June 2002, IG Metall and Arbeitgeberverband Stahl also signed a new pay agreement for the 10,000 or so employees in the east German steel industry, which adopted almost completely the provisions of the west German steel agreement.