Germany’s largest industrial union, IG Metall, with 3.8 million members mainly in the automotive and machine tool sectors, signed a wage agreement with industrialists on Friday, November 18. The previous one dated from 2018.

The deal initially applies only to Baden-Württemberg, the third most populous Land (State) of the sixteen that make up the Federal Republic of Germany, and whose major cities include Stuttgart, Mannheim, Karlsruhe, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Ulm and Heilbronn; it is, however, likely to be extended nationwide.

The agreement calls for an 8.5 percent wage increase over two years: 5.2% next year and 3.3% in 2024; plus there is a one-off tax-free payment of €3,000.

This increase is well below the rate of inflation, which is currently 10.4% in Germany in general, but with higher rates applying to food and energy, commodities that naturally affect working-class consumption the most.

Inflation is expected to drop in the next two years, but this is by no means certain. What’s more, the old contract expired in September, and the first increase of 5.2% will not come until June 2023.

On September 14, IG Metall’s leadership submitted a request for an 8% increase for 2023 alone in its first meeting with the employers’ federation, Gesamtmetall.

"Our patience is wearing thin. The industrialists must take responsibility and make a concrete offer,” thundered Jörg Hofmann, secretary of IG Metall, after the failure of the fourth round of negotiations, threatening strike action.

But at the fifth meeting, held in Ludwigsburg, near Stuttgart, he finally accepted a significantly lower deal.

This will not even have to be submitted to a vote of the membership, since, according to IG Metall’s rules, this is only mandatory if workers have previously been called to vote on whether to proceed with a general strike action in the category, which did not happen.

The agreement followed a series of local strikes and demonstrations, which were not unified by the union into a general movement across the country.

Thousands of workers participated in a “day of action on the seaboard” in northern Germany on Wednesday, November 16.

This involved strikes in 13 northern cities. In Hamburg, some 26,000 workers went on strike from 80 companies, including Airbus, Arcelor Mittal, Philips and Jungheinrich, while 5,000 gathered for a rally at Hamburg’s Fish Market. In Hanover and Osnabrück 7,000 rallied; in Bremen 2,500; in Kiel 1,500; in Rostock 800.

Warning strikes, lasting only a few hours, were called at various factories: Liebherr, Neptun Werft, Caterpillar, Otis Aufzüge, and Siemens in Rostock. Elsewhere in Germany, 1,800 BMW workers went on strike in Leipzig; in the Feuerbach industrial district of Stuttgart, about 2,000 workers struck at Robert Bosch GmbH, Coperion, Mahle, Koenig & Bauer MetalPrint, Voith, Lapp and many other factories; more than 72,000 workers from 578 companies in Germany’s largest State, North Rhine-Westphalia, had been taking part in warning strikes for two weeks since the end of October. Participatory assemblies took place at factories in Arnsberg, Bielefeld, Duisburg, Mülheim, Gelsenkirchen, Essen, and Oberhausen.

The management of IG Metall only threatened 24-hour strike action but showed no real intention to unify and extend the strike movement. Many workers, however, called for the organization of an indefinite strike and the demand for a 15 percent raise, which would be needed to restore real wages.

Meanwhile, the bourgeois regime in Berlin raised the minimum wage to 12 euros per hour on Oct. 12, and State civil service workers got a 10.5 percent raise in some Länder (States) with a 500-euro anti-inflation bonus.

The strength of German imperialism – among the most powerful in the world – still allows its ruling class, aided by regime unionism, to keep the working class pacified. But this situation is destined not to continue, due to the inexorable advance and deepening of global capitalism’s historic economic crisis of overproduction.

The working class in Germany will also return to struggle alongside its class brothers around the world!