Steel Striking for a 35-Hour Week

Germany's biggest industrial union, IG Metall, is mounting strikes in the eastern German steel industry, pressing for a 35-hour work week in a region struggling with a fragile economy and high unemployment. The metalworkers' union is demanding a reduction in weekly hours worked in the East from the current 38, bringing the eastern workweek in line with that in the West.

The strikes, likely to start on June 2, follow a ballot in which 83 percent of 7,000 steel workers polled supported strike action, well above the 75 percent approval rate required. Strikes will most likely begin at eastern Germany's largest steel plant, Eko Stahl in Eisenhüttenstadt, an industrial town close to the German-Polish border. Planned talks in Berlin on June 3, are not expected to stop the union mobilizing the rank and file.

"The result proves how determined our members are to fight for the introduction of a 35-hour week," said Hasso Düvel, IG Metall's regional manager for the states of Berlin, Brandenburg and Saxony. The union abrogated its blanket contracts in those three eastern states.

In mid-January, IG Metall ripped up its contracts covering nearly a third of a million workers in the vital eastern automotive, electrical and mechanical engineering sectors. Their union wage scales were aligned with those in western Germany in 1996. IG Metall has called the 35-hour week its No. 1 priority for the East. While similar attempts to reduce the workweek in these states failed in 1998 and again in 2000, IG Metall reached a collective bargaining agreement for a 4 percent wage rise for its members in the West in May last year following a 10-day strike.

But in the economically depressed East, a shortened workweek would sound the death knell for many businesses, economists and politicians from all fractions argue. "The decision to strike is totally irresponsible and fails to take note of the current economic situation," CDU deputy parliamentary leader Friedrich Merz told dpa news agency. Gesamtmetall, the employers' bargaining agent for the metalworking and engineering sectors, and its smaller counterpart in the steel sector have also spoken out against the planned strikes, arguing that a 35-hour week would be poison for employment in the region. Union contracts cover 310,000 workers in eastern companies, with a further 8,000 working in the steel sector.

"The longer working week is the last competitive advantage the eastern German metalworking industry has," Gesamtmetall President Martin Kannegiesser told Deutschland Radio. "These companies can't afford strike action, their economic strength is not large enough," he added. Economists agree, arguing that even a gradual reduction in hours would signal the end for many eastern companies.

Martin Wansleben, general manager of the German association of chambers of commerce, the DIHK, said the region actually needed longer working hours to improve its competitiveness. According to Klaus Zimmermann, president of DIW think tank, a shortened work week would amount to a real cost difference of 8 percent. Some estimate a loss of up to 20,000 jobs as a direct result.