In the middle of the energy crisis, the unions Verdi and the German Civil Service Association (DBB) are demanding 10.5 percent more money for the more than two and a half million federal and local employees, but at least 500 euros more per month. In response to two years of real wage losses, there must be an effective development of collectively agreed wages, said Verdi federal boss Frank Werneke on Tuesday in Berlin after the federal collective bargaining commissions of Verdi and the civil servants’ association had agreed on a joint collective bargaining demand.
Werneke and DBB chairman Ulrich Silberbach expressly pointed out that the employees would fight energetically for their goals. The willingness to mobilize is high, said the Verdi boss.
In view of inflation and the development of food and especially energy prices, the pressure in the public sector is great. Werneke emphasized that it was one of the highest wage demands in Verdi’s history. Silberbach announced “tough negotiations”. The federal and local governments are already missing 360,000 employees due to uncompetitive wages.
The Association of Municipal Employers’ Associations (VKA) rejected the demands as “unrealizable”. They “did not take into account the difficult financial situation of municipal budgets and companies,” explained VKA President Karin Welge. According to this, the additional costs for the required wage increase for municipal employers would weigh around 15.4 billion euros. Despite understanding for the concerns of the employees because of the high inflation, this is “simply not affordable”.
VKA general manager Niklas Benrath criticized that it was “in truth a demanded pay increase of almost 14 percent on average”. This results from the required minimum amount of 500 euros per month. “Salaries would rise by well over 20 percent in the lower pay brackets.”
According to the Institute for Economic and Social Sciences (WSI) of the trade union-affiliated Hans Böckler Foundation, collective wages rose by an average of 2.9 percent nationwide in the first half of 2022. The new contracts from the first half of 2022 reach 4.5 percent. Due to inflation, however, employees suffer a real minus of 3.6 percent.
The current collective agreement for the public sector at federal and local level expires at the end of the year. Collective bargaining for the largest collective bargaining round in 2023 begins on January 24, 2023 in Potsdam. Further collective bargaining is scheduled for February 22nd and 23rd and for the days from March 27th to 29th.
The negotiations affect more than two and a half million employees. The collective bargaining result is applied to around 190,000 civil servants and 500,000 federal pensioners and indirectly affects employees of other public institutions.
Werneke argued that the pay round was intended to prevent many hard-working people from threatening to decline as a result of the impending recession. “The talk of supposedly inevitable losses in prosperity is talk that the wealthy can perhaps afford, but the public sector employees definitely don’t.”
According to DBB boss Silberbach, the mood of the employees is often miserable. “There’s a bazooka, there’s a bang, there’s a double bang – and then the savings hammer should be brought out for the public service,” said the union boss. “The colleagues are ready to fight for these demands because they can no longer bear to always have to serve as the nation’s paymaster.”
With their demand, Verdi and the civil service association are well above the demand for wage rounds in the metal and electrical industry. IG Metall had asked for eight percent more money here. Werneke said that the Verdi membership had sometimes resulted in much higher wage demands.
Warning strikes in winter are likely given the different positions in the collective bargaining round. Income is negotiated in hundreds of professions – including for teachers, bus drivers, firefighters, nurses and ground services at airports. In the previous rounds in 2020 and 2018, public life was also massively disrupted by warning strikes.
