Metal and Electrical Collective Bargaining Round 2026: “The situation is extremely differentiated... What should we demand?”

Dossier “The collective bargaining movement in the metal and electrical industries has started.

The collective bargaining committees of IG Metall have come together to discuss the situation and initial demands.

The situation is extremely differentiated: many companies are in crisis, while others are making good profits.

From October, IG Metall will again be negotiating higher wages for 3.8 million employees in the metal and electrical industries.

At the start of the collective bargaining movement, the collective bargaining committees of IG Metall decided on Wednesday to terminate the current collective wage agreements in the metal and electrical industries - the prerequisite for collective bargaining - and started the discussion about the economic situation and possible demands for collective bargaining ..." IG Metall report from 25.

June 2026 and the first contributions to it: Pforzheim sends its regards: IG Metall ready for a flexible collective bargaining agreement even before the start of the 2026 metal and electrical collective bargaining round - (Flassbeck: "a terrific wrong move") Christiane Benner: IG Metall is ready for a flexible collective bargaining agreement "The union leader Christiane Benner wants to differentiate more strongly according to business situation and region in the wage round.

However, she rejects pure inflation compensation.

IG Metall wants to achieve noticeable wage increases for employees in the upcoming collective bargaining round in the metal and electrical industries. “Compensating for inflation would not be enough,” said IG Metall chairwoman Christiane Benner in an interview with WirtschaftsWoche [paywall].

At the same time, given the difficult situation of many industrial companies, Benner was open to a collective agreement with opening clauses. “We know that the economic situation is tense for many companies.

I have never experienced a situation like this during my time at IG Metall," said Benner. "Flexible instruments that take the economic situation into account are not a revolution.

They are part of a differentiated tariff policy – ​​and they have already existed in the past,” said Benner in an interview with WirtschaftsWoche.

She pointed out that things were going very well in some industries, such as aviation, parts of the energy sector, medical technology and the defense industry.

There are also big differences geographically ..." Article by Bert Losse and Annina Reimann from August 31, 2026 in the WirtschaftsWoche online IG-Metall wants more company wage flexibility - That is a grandiose wrong move "Not from the employers, no, from IG-Metall itself there is a push to make collective bargaining agreements more flexible.

This is tragic.

However, it shows the disorientation of union officials that has become rampant since the early 2000s.

For decades, the collective agreement was the most important instrument of union wage policy.

But the knowledge about the outstanding importance of the collective agreement for employees and for the entire economy has been lost.

Anyone who wants productivity increases and rising real wages for all employees must insist on the strict application of the collective agreement.

Anyone who deviates from this will lead the economy down the wrong path of saving jobs at all costs. (…) The mobility of labor that is assumed by classical theory does not exist (…) in modern labor markets.

On the one hand, employees have become sedentary and cannot and do not want to move every few months to look for a new job.

On the other hand, companies are also keen to retain well-trained specialists because the search costs on their part may be very high.

As a result, in the 1950s and 1960s of the last century, trade unions in some countries began to agree on collective agreements that similarly regulate salary structures and wage increases across entire sectors or - through cooperation between different unions - even across the entire economy.

These collective bargaining agreements are nothing more than a functional equivalent of labor mobility in a world where the workforce is no longer so mobile. (…) Despite the immobility of the workforce, whatever the cause, the law of “equal pay for equal work” can be enforced.

This is best guaranteed by an area collective agreement with as few exceptions as possible.

Only in such a system can economic development be controlled through profits rather than through substitute mechanisms such as company agreements.

Just as with state subsidies for distressed industries, a deviation from the principle of the same price for all factors of production, including labor, must be the exception.

A number of cases have shown in the past that anyone who makes the exception the rule not only destroys the structures of social dialogue that have developed in our country for many good reasons, but above all the market economy efficiency of a dynamically developing system. (…) Wage agreements in which the individual industries pay wage increases in accordance with the productivity development in their respective industry or sector are problematic for similar reasons as company differentiation.

If the sector of the economy with the highest productivity growth has to cope with the highest wage increases and the one with the lowest productivity growth has to cope with the lowest, this also inhibits technical progress and thus brings with it a loss of income compared to a situation in which all sectors are based on the average productivity growth of the entire economy.

This is because the profits and thus the investment opportunities in the more successful sectors grow more slowly and the scope for relative price reductions in the more successful sectors compared to the less successful ones decreases in purely sector-oriented wage agreements. (…) The attempt to save the industry from a cost perspective through below-average wage growth is doomed to failure in the medium to long term because the workers will try to change the industry.

Depending on your qualifications, such a change is not generally impossible.

While a miner may not be able to move into the telecommunications field without time-consuming retraining, a construction electrician will find work in the industry without too much difficulty.

The Law of One Price cannot be overridden at will.

When it comes to the question of which type of training is preferred among school leavers, the prospects of future employment income play a role.

If below-average wage increases are agreed for years in a weak industry, this will not attract new talent among the workforce.

Then, in addition to the below-average productivity development, there is also a kind of negative selection on the labor market, which is likely to further darken the long-term prospects of the industry.” Article by Heiner Flassbeck from 2.

September 2026 on his blog Relevant Economics “Tariff revolution” at IG Metall “The next round of tariffs in the metal and electrical industries will start in the fall.

As always, the companies have “nothing to distribute”.

IG Metall's answer: We understand, but there are also companies that make a lot of profit.

So more wages there and, of course, less for the rest.

About a fatal logic. (…) Selling a discount for many with a surcharge for a few Because at first glance, the idea of ​​IG Metall does not fit into the current “landscape” in which, as is well known, there is nothing to distribute due to the economic crisis.

In the end, it paves the way for appropriately low collective agreements.

And it works like this: Only those companies in the metal and electrical industry that are doing comparatively well, contrary to the generally worse situation, should pay the surcharge.

These include the aerospace industry, medical and energy technology, arms manufacturers and parts of mechanical engineering.

The majority of companies would not have to pay a surcharge and would receive their required low collective bargaining agreement.

In any case, a significant number of them pay even less.

Because the so-called “T-money” is automatically eliminated for those companies whose return on sales falls below 2.3 percent.

In this way, the union could sell its members a low collective bargaining agreement that is appropriate for the crisis.

This means, writes the Süddeutsche Zeitung, that it “does not have to fear that its members in high-earning armaments or space companies will reject the general agreement” (SZ, ibid.).

The charm of the special payment: can be adjusted at any time if necessary. Welcome to the tariff jungle: In addition to the monthly wages, corner wages, holiday bonuses and Christmas bonuses, in addition to the countless wage groups and different wage levels depending on the federal state, there is also the special payment “tariff additional money” (T-Money), amounting to 18.4 percent of the monthly salary.

According to IG Metall, special payments have the advantage: “They can be differentiated and converted into time in order to secure jobs in operational crises without the monthly salary being reduced.” Companies thus have a convenient means of paying their employees less during a valid collective agreement - if they make less profit than the aforementioned 2.3 percent.

The supposed “tariff revolution” now consists of exceptionally reversing this instrument: “We have an automatic downward differentiation of parts of the salary if a company is doing poorly.

Then there should also be an automatic upward differentiation if business is going well.

It would be conceivable to increase the T-money if a company has generated a certain return on sales,” says Knut Giesler, district manager of IG Metall in North Rhine-Westphalia (quoted from SZ, ibid.) …” Article by Björn Hendrig from 29.

August 2026 in the Overton magazine IG Metallers call for “flexibility downwards and upwards” “Two regional IG Metall bosses suggest linking collective wages more closely to company success.

This means that defense and energy companies would be asked to pay more and car manufacturers would be spared.

Berlin.

In the run-up to the big collective bargaining round in the fall, two district managers of IG Metall made a proposal as to how the social partners could bridge the enormous gap within the industry: They suggested that high-earning companies pay their employees a surcharge.

In return, this could enable a lower general collective bargaining agreement for the approximately four million employees in the entire metal and electrical industry.

The parts of the industry that are not doing well would be spared - especially the car manufacturers and their suppliers. (…) Benner therefore complained: “Employers are using the crisis as an excuse to do tabula rasa.” They tried to “strip away achievements that we fought hard for and paid for,” she said, referring to Mercedes supervisory board boss Martin Brudermüller’s call for a return to the 40-hour week.

Volkswagen has announced that it will cut at least 50,000 jobs by 2030 - there are also plans for up to four plant closures, which the group has not yet officially confirmed.

The upcoming collective bargaining round for Germany's largest industrial sector in the fall will be correspondingly complicated.

Insiders report that nervousness is already extremely high, especially among employers. “In the end, more differentiation could be necessary,” announced Benner.

The two IG-Metall district managers for the coast and North Rhine-Westphalia regions, Daniel Friedrich and Knut Giesler, have already brought a very specific differentiation into play.

They want to expand an instrument that has so far only been intended for crises: “transformation money” (T-Money), which is called “transformer module” in Baden-Württemberg.

This is another annual special payment introduced in 2021 in addition to the Christmas and holiday bonuses.

It amounts to 18.4 percent of a monthly income.

However, if a company's return on sales falls below 2.3 percent, it can postpone the payment and, if necessary, suspend it completely.

The trade unionists suggest that this instrument could be repurposed so that booming companies pay more if they reach a certain level of return.

The “Süddeutsche Zeitung” first reported about it …” Article by Barbara Gillmann from August 21, 2026 in the Handelsblatt online We remind you of: Collective agreements to protect competitiveness?

Article by Wolfgang Schaumberg and Mag Wompel, published in express 11-12/1997 See our section Differentiation and flexibilization of collective bargaining policy in the LaborNetArchive (until 2012) and therein, among other things:

How much differentiation can solidarity tolerate?

Survey of employees in the metal and electrical industries begins.

Capitalists complain about costs and the crisis: Watch out for wage depressers! “The collective bargaining for the metal and electrical industries will only begin in October, but discussions in the collective bargaining committees have already begun.

On the 1st

The employee survey on the demands with which IG Metall wants to go into negotiations will start in June. (…) The first question in the form is: “How do you assess the economic situation in your company?” Only then are topics that concern colleagues asked: rising food prices, housing costs, health costs, job security, the future of the company, further training opportunities, training and taking on young people, and pensions.

You then have the option of sorting your own idea of ​​the wage requirement: “strong”, “moderate”, “small” or “no wage increase at all” – these are the possible answers.

There is no provision for specifying a wage increase in euros or percent.

It is therefore left to the interpretation of the evaluators whether a significant increase is 3 or 10 percent, 50 or 500 euros.

The last question is about the willingness of those surveyed to get involved – that is, to become a member, to get information, to take part in warning strikes or to go on strike “if it is necessary”.

This questionnaire will be of little help in determining claims.

It appears that expectations are to be dampened - also because the question about the economic situation was chosen as the starting point. (…) Real wages have been declining since 2018.

In addition, the employment security agreements have also reduced real wages because collective bargaining standards have been lowered there. “In particular, bonuses that are above the collective agreement are reduced or completely abolished; in individual cases, existing collective agreements are also terminated.

The collective bargaining interventions not only affect salary components and special payments, but also working time regulations. (…) They mean real wage losses for a large proportion of the employees in the industry," says the WSI. (…) One thing is as certain as the amen in church: the capitalists will complain loudly.

Hildegard Müller, President of the Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA), complained on January 13th.

May in the Tagesschau about the high wage costs and the serious and ongoing location crisis.

The closer we get to the statement of demands, the louder the capitalists' lamentation becomes.

But our colleagues must not let this deter them.

There is no right time for capital to give a good wage increase.

It always wants – whether in a crisis or a boom – to push down wages in order to increase profits.

The fact is – and the WSI figures also show this – that most companies continue to make profits despite falling profit margins.

They’re just lower than the profits they want.” Article by Christa Hourani in UZ from 29.

May 2026 See last: Dossier: Metal and Electrical Collective Bargaining Round 2024: “We want more money because we need it” (7 percent more wages for 12 months) The graphic for the dossier is from the Metal and Electrical Collective Bargaining Round 2024: “We want more money because we need it” (7 percent more wages for 12 months) (IG Metall) The article Metal and Electrical Collective Bargaining Round 2026: “The situation is extremely differentiated... What should we do? demand?” appeared first on LabourNet Germany.