After several days of negotiations, his largest union Germany salary increases agreed with employers, which will amount to 8.5% for the next year and the year after. It’s the metalworkers’ union, the mighty IG Metall, which represents 3.90 million workers in the industry and has won 5.2% wage increases next year and 3.3% in 2024. But she also secured a €3,000 bonus. industry workers to partially offset the impact of high inflation. Commenting on what is happening, the president of IG Metall, Joerg Hofmann, stressed that “soon there will be significantly more money in the pockets of workers.” However, not everyone shares his point of view, as many analysts believe that this increase is not enough to offset the real reduction in wages caused by high inflation. Among them is Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING Frankfurt, who said “the deal is not enough to make up for the purchasing power that workers are losing, but at least it mitigate the damage.” He adds, after all, that “for the ECB, this means that the so-called secondary inflationary pressure remains capped low, but at the same time, inflation could last much longer than markets currently estimate.”

In addition, the German Metalworkers’ Union awarded the workers a bonus of 3,000 euros for punctuality.

This was preceded by strikes by metalworkers involving 900,000 workers, which affected the production of auto parts by Robert Bosch GmbH.

Analysts say the talks and agreement outline the current situation in which inflation is eroding household purchasing power, workers are aggressively demanding higher wages, and employers are refusing to give them, citing increased operating costs due to the energy crisis and inflation. . In this case, however, the agreed increases are less than the union’s original request for an 8% annual increase. However, they are more than the original offer of employers, who offered only 3,000 euros for 30 months. The agreement is also expected to have an impact on related negotiations currently under way between German trade unions and companies.