Pay rise for Austrian metalworkers

On 30 October, after several weeks totaling more than 100 hours of negotiation with the six groups of the metal industry, IndustriALL Global Union affiliate PRO-GE and the non-manual workers’ unions in the private sector, GPA-DJP, reached their goal of one collective agreement for about 180,000 employees.

The collective bargaining results at a glance include:

• Minimum wage increase: 3.4 per cent
• Increase in actual wages: 3.3 per cent
• New Minimum Wage: 1636.35 EUR
• Apprentice wage increase: 3.4 per cent
• Increase of allowances: 3.0 per cent
• Date of application: 1 November 2012
• Duration: 12 months

Usually in Austria, bargaining in the metal industry sets the trend for all other sectors in the country. Negotiations were expected to be tough this year as for the first time employers announced earlier in the year that they no longer wanted to bargain jointly but separately.

“The negotiations were mostly cooperative but we continue to criticize the decisions of some employer groups to separate negotiations in the metal industry,”

said Rainer Wimmer, President of PRO-GE and President of IndustriALL’s Mechanical Engineering Sector.  

Austria's metal industry, which is the first sector to agree annual pay deals, split into six groups for this year's negotiations. Austrian metalworkers won a pay rise of up to 3.4 per cent, which is below last year’s increase but above inflation.

"Under difficult conditions, we reached a result that secures the purchasing power of the employees,"

said Rainer Wimmer (PRO-GE) and Karl Proyer (GPA-DJP).