On 6 April, the public sector unions and representatives of the federal and local governments agreed on a comprehensive collective agreement for approximately 2.5 million employees. This followed an arbitration process after employers declared the collective negotiations a failure. The German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) is now demanding that the results will also be applied to federal civil servants. The new agreement provides for a two-stage increase in the standard wage scales: starting 1 April 2025, wages will increase by 3%, but by at least € 110 per month. A further increase of 2.8% will follow on 1 May 2026. Dynamized allowances will increase accordingly by 3.11% (starting April 2025) and 2.8% (starting May 2026). The collective agreement is valid until 31 March 2027. The union ver.di is currently conducting a member survey on the collective agreement. It remains to be seen whether the agreements will be extended to the more than 370,000 civil servants, judges, soldiers, and pension recipients of the federal government. The DGB reacted with sharp criticism. The DGB announced that it would continue to exert massive pressure on the future federal Government to achieve a fair and legally secure transfer of the collective bargaining results.
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For more information, please contact Paul de Beer or Oana Ciuca, De Burcht (Scientific Bureau for the Dutch Trade Union Movement) p.t.debeer@uva.nl or the Head of communications at the ETUI, Mehmet Koksal mkoksal@etui.org. For previous full issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit https://www.etui.org/Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter or consult the archive with all articles in our database at www.cbnarchive.eu.
You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org.