German employers and metalworkers agreed on a pay rise to end a 10-day strike in the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg that's cut production at companies including DaimlerChrysler AG.
As many as 870,000 workers will get a 4 percent pay rise from June and a 3.1 percent increase a year later, as well as a one-time payment of 120 euros (US$109), IG Metall, Germany's second-largest union, and the Gesamtmetall employers group said.
The strikes, the first in seven years, have made it more difficult for Europe's largest economy to recover from last year's recession. Unemployment rose in April for a 14th month in 16, while business confidence fell for the first month in six.
"Given the state of the economy, the wage deal is too high," said Ulrich Ruetz, chief executive officer of Beru AG, a maker of ignition systems for customers including General Motors Corp and DaimlerChrysler.
"It's a substantial increase in costs, which may prompt us consider moving production and jobs to other countries like Ireland, Hungary, France or Spain," he said.
The accord reached may set a precedent for other regions.
Still, IG Metall chairman Klaus Zwickel said at a press conference that it doesn't mean an end to the nationwide pay dispute.
"There's no all-clear for Berlin and Brandenburg," said Hasso Duevel, IG Metall's chief wage negotiator in the region.
Some 2,800 workers at nine companies will strike on "as planned" on Thursday, he said.
The European Central Bank has said it's worried higher wages and rising oil prices may boost inflation, spurring it to raise borrowing costs for the first time in 18 months.
Inflation has been at or above the ECB's 2 percent limit for 23 months. ECB President Wim Duisenberg said two weeks ago that inflation isn't slowing as much as expected. Consumer prices climbed in April in France, Spain, the Netherlands and Finland.
"It's a bearable agreement for the ECB. It will contain some of the upside risks the ECB has been mentioning in the past weeks," said Jose Luis Alzola, an economist at Schroder Salomon Smith Barney. "They will now be a little more relaxed."
The breakthrough is a boost for German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, whose party is trailing the opposition by as many as 10 percentage points in opinion polls before September's election.
"The voices of reason in both camps have prevailed," he said.
Some 23,000 workers at 25 companies went on strike today in Germany's south-western region, the home of 4,600 of Germany's 22,000 metals and engineering companies. Strikes cost an average 945 euros (US$862) in sales per day per worker, according to the IW economic institute.
"We welcome very much that the hard fought-over compromise means no further effects on car deliveries," said Guenther Fleig, DaimlerChrysler's head of personnel, in a faxed statement. "The positive outlook for 2002 thus remains intact."
IG Metall had raised pressure outside Baden-Wuerttemberg.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS