From 7.30 a.m. there will be warning strikes at Hofer, Forstinger, dm, Lidl, Billa Plus, Adler and NKD in the Ansfelden business park. The action will last two to three hours, the private employees’ union GPA told the OÖNachrichten on Sunday. It is therefore possible that operations and thus shopping for customers will be affected, depending on how the company reacts and whether there are replacement workers.
As reported, the sixth round of collective bargaining negotiations also failed on the night from Friday to Saturday. Now the union wants to increase the pressure again with warning strikes and rallies. There will also be a strike tomorrow morning in the Center West in Graz, and there will be actions on Wienerstrasse and Weinzöttlstrasse in the Styrian capital. The GPA explains that they act with “concentrated actions”, i.e. not with small strikes in many companies, but with a few larger actions that are intended to attract attention. Something is planned for Tuesday in Vienna and Sankt Pölten, the rest is still being developed. Nothing other than tomorrow in Ansfelden is planned for Upper Austria.
Negotiations took place for more than nine hours on Saturday night. It failed due to the “economic framework conditions,” said Chamber of Commerce Chairman Rainer Trefelik after the talks were broken off. “We have calculated a wide variety of variants,” says Trefelik. A salary increase of 8.2 percent would have been “conceivable,” but more was “unaffordable” for the companies. Rolling inflation from October 2022 to September 2023 was 9.2 percent.
The union’s chief negotiator Helga Fichtinger criticized the employers’ “delaying tactics”. “That’s not fair.” According to its own information, the union has proposed a socially graded salary between 8.58 and 9.38 percent. That would be an average salary increase of 8.96 percent. An opening clause for companies in economic difficulties was apparently also on the table. According to the union, employers only offered an increase of eight percent plus ten euros.
Fichtinger is now pushing for talks at a “higher level”, for example between ÖGB boss Wolfgang Katzian and Economic Chamber President Harald Mahrer. Another round of KV negotiations is currently not planned for next week.
Due to the failed negotiations, the Federal Trade Division is now recommending that its member companies voluntarily increase the collective minimum salaries by eight percent. The trade association supports this. A recommendation offers “no legal certainty,” criticized Fichtinger.
The KV talks have been going on since the end of October and were accompanied by company meetings, public rallies and warning strikes during the Christmas season. The union entered the negotiations demanding an eleven percent increase in wages. The employers only made their opening offer in the third round with an increase of five percent and a one-off payment of 800 euros.
The commercial KV is about the salaries of 430,000 employees and 15,000 apprentices. It is the largest industry collective agreement in Austria. Almost two thirds of the 430,000 employees are women; in retail the proportion of women is even higher. Almost 60 percent of women in retail work part-time, while the part-time rate for men is around 13 percent.
Author
Alexander Zens
Economics editor
Alexander Zens
