The German White-Collar Workers' Union (DAG) and the Commerce, Banking and Insurance Union (HBV) were not able to sign a common collective agreement for private sector banking in January 2000. While DAG accepted the employers' offer and signed the deal, HBV objected to the provisions concerning Saturday working. HBV has not ruled out the possibility of a strike over the issue.
After a period of 13 months without a collective agreement in force in private sector banking, the employers and the German White-collar Workers' Union (Deutsche Angestellten Gewerkschaft, DAG), along with two smaller federations for salaried employees, concluded a collective agreement on 24 January 2000 for 470,000 employees in this sector. In the accord, the parties agreed on a two-stage pay increase to be implemented by the end of March 2001, with employees receiving a 1.5% pay increase on 1 April 2000 and a further 1.5% on 1 August 2000. Furthermore a one-off payment will be made in March 2000. In addition, the deal provides for "voluntary" payments – a single payment of DEM 350 and a 3.1% pay rise backdated to April 1999.
The Commerce, Banking and Insurance union (Gewerkschaft Handel, Banken und Versicherungen, HBV) did not sign the agreement on 24 January. Its main objection was that DAG has agreed to experiment with Saturday working for two years. From 1 October 2000, bank employees will start to work on Saturdays, but on a voluntary basis, with a maximum of 6% of all employees in any business allowed to work on Saturdays. These employees will be compensated with time off. However new employees will not be entitled to compensatory time off. In a press release, Klaus Carlin, an HBV spokesperson in the negotiations, stated that the fact that new employees are not eligible for time off is the main reason for HBV not accepting the agreement, as this would lead to an unacceptable "two-class society" within a single branch. In addition, work on Saturdays was previously seen as overtime, attracting pay premia of up to 50%. Gerhard Renner, spokesperson for DAG, takes a different view to that of HBV. In his opinion, accepting the Saturday working experiment made it possible to reject proposed changes for the worse concerning early retirement, partial retirement and employment security. The employers' spokesperson, Tessen von Heydebreck, considers the voluntary Saturday work experiment as a step towards improving competitiveness. After having tried to introduce Saturday work for the past 10 years, this outcome is seen as a great success for the employers.
Despite disagreement on the side of HBV, the new collective agreement is valid for 14 months. Following the signature of the agreement, there is a period of four weeks in which the signatories can withdraw from it. Both DAG and HBV are using this time to seek support from their members for their respective strategies, and HBV does not rule out the possibility of a strike.
The dispute between HBV and DAG is considered as creating a delicate situation, given the forthcoming creation of an unified service sector trade union (Vereinigte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft, Verdi) (DE9911225F). HBV and DAG are two of five unions which are in the process of merging to form a single union in order to achieve greater influence in the services sector.