Dhe around 2.5 million employees in the public sector get in view of the high Inflation significantly more money: the federal government, municipalities and unions agreed on higher tariffs late on Saturday evening after several hours of negotiations in Potsdam, as all parties involved announced.
Among other things, the agreement provides for tax and duty-free special payments totaling 3,000 euros in several stages. EUR 1,240 of this should already flow this June, and a further EUR 220 each in the months from July to February 2024.
From March 2024 there will then be a base amount of 200 euros as a wage increase and then 5.5 percent more. If no increase of 340 euros is achieved, the relevant increase amount should be set to this sum. With this solution, the parties to the collective bargaining largely based themselves on the compromise proposal from the one that ended a week ago arbitration procedure. The term of the agreement is to be 24 months.
“We have accommodated the unions as much as we can still be responsible for in a difficult budget situation,” said Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) after the round of negotiations. “We have reached a responsible collective bargaining agreement.”
Challenge for financially weak municipalities
Verdi chairman Frank Werneke said the service union’s wage commission had recommended that members accept the wage compromise. According to Werneke, the negotiations were not easy. “With our decision to make this compromise, we went to the pain threshold,” he said. The parties in Potsdam had been struggling to find a solution since Saturday afternoon.
Frank Werneke, chairman of the verdi trade union, speaks to media representatives before the start of collective bargaining
Source: dpa/Monika Skolimowska
The solution found poses particular challenges for the many cash-strapped municipalities in Germany. The President of the Association of Municipal Employers’ Associations, Karin Welge, had estimated the additional costs for cities and municipalities on the basis of the arbitration proposal at 17 billion euros before the negotiations.
A strike ballot among the unions and possible indefinite strikes are off the table with the agreement. The bargaining parties have been negotiating with each other for months. Again and again, the employee representatives had paralyzed administrations, city cleaning and swimming pools with nationwide warning strikes. At the end of March, Verdi, together with the railway and transport unions, brought one large-scale warning strike both rail and air traffic nationwide to a standstill.
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