A number of German beer brands were temporarily idle on Thursday. The union NGG had called for warning strikes. What is the wage dispute with the manufacturers about?
During warning strikes in well-known breweries such as Beck’s, Hasseröder and Diebels, the employees on Thursday demanded significantly more money in the ongoing collective bargaining talks. Production at Beck’s had already come to a standstill during the night, said a spokesman for the Food-Genuss-Gaststätten (NGG) union, which had called for a walkout.
Further walkouts were planned here for Thursday lunchtime and afternoon. According to the union, operations at Diebels and the Dortmunder Actien brewery were also temporarily suspended. At Hasseröder in Wernigerode in the Harz Mountains it was said: “Everyone is outside.”
With the campaigns, the NGG wants to underline the wage demands of the members. However, these vary from area to area and sometimes also from company to company. The union at Beck’s demands 12 percent more money over a period of one year. In North Rhine-Westphalia she wants to push through a wage increase of 430 euros per month for all employees. A union spokesman said that the lower wage groups, which were hit particularly hard by the high inflation, should be better off as a result.
Partly clearly moved away from the demands
In the case of Wernigerode, according to a spokeswoman, the NGG has now moved away from its original demand for a wage increase of 10 percent and currently wants 5 percent and a one-off payment of 1,500 euros. The union has rejected previous offers from employers as a provocation.
The three beer brands from Bremen, Wernigerode (Saxony-Anhalt) and Issum (North Rhine-Westphalia) belong to the largest brewery group in the world, the Anheuser-Busch (AB) InBev group from Belgium. When asked about the wage demands, the company kept a low profile on Thursday: “We are currently in talks that are very fair and constructive.” However, no information was given about the current status.
Last year, beer sales in Germany rose to 7.2 billion liters, not least thanks to the summer of the century. That was 4 percent more than in the historically weakest beer year, 2021, when restaurants and hotels were closed for months due to corona, but still 5 percent less than in the last year before the pandemic, 2019. At the same time, the industry is complaining about the sharp rise in the cost of raw materials and energy . Numerous breweries had therefore recently announced price increases.
Source: Stern
