Collective bargaining agreement
Emergency clause enables 28-hour week at VW
After a long struggle, VW and IG Metall agreed on a collective agreement shortly before Christmas. In addition to an employment guarantee, it also contains an emergency clause.
In its collective bargaining agreement with IG Metall, Volkswagen secured itself against a further escalation of the crisis with an emergency clause. The future collective agreement concluded shortly before Christmas contains a regulation that allows working hours to be reduced to 28 hours in the event of bottlenecks – with only partial wage compensation, company circles confirmed to the German Press Agency. “Business Insider” had previously reported.
The prerequisite is that all other measures such as overtime reduction and short-time work have been exhausted beforehand, according to the collective agreement that is available to the German Press Agency. In the event of temporary employment problems, the weekly working hours for all employees can then be reduced by up to seven hours, i.e. from the regular 35 to up to 28 hours.
There should be full wage compensation for the first two hours of reduction, and from the third hour onwards the wages will be reduced proportionately. A maximum of three of the six hours remained unpaid. However, it was said in corporate circles that the regulation was only intended for an absolute emergency that the situation would worsen dramatically, which no one expected.
Four-day week as a role model
The regulation is reminiscent of the four-day week, which VW used to prevent impending job cuts more than 30 years ago. At that time, too, the company was in a deep crisis, with tens of thousands of jobs at risk. To prevent this, the then VW HR director Peter Hartz agreed with IG Metall at the end of 1993 to reduce working hours across the board. The regulation remained in force for more than twelve years.
Shortly before Christmas, after a long struggle, the company and the union agreed on a restructuring program that would cut 35,000 jobs in Germany by 2030. In return, VW reinstated the previously terminated employment security and extended it until 2030. The planned job cuts should now take place without any redundancies for operational reasons. VW has around 130,000 employees in its plants in Lower Saxony, Hesse and Saxony.
dpa
Source: Stern
