IG Metall Says 36,000 Strike Across Bavaria as Wage Talks Fail
IG Metall said roughly 36,000 workers in Bavaria’s metal and electrical industries joined warning strikes on Monday, November 9, as a third bargaining round in Munich ended without agreement. The day’s stoppages reached 110 workplaces, according to the union, with the largest action involving 15,000 workers at Audi and other plants around Ingolstadt.
In Nuremberg, 3,500 workers from more than 30 companies marched in three columns toward a central rally. Employees from Bosch, MAN, Siemens Energy, Siemens Mobility, Innomotics and other manufacturers took part. The local union said 35 workplaces were called out and estimated that 5,000 workers joined stoppages in the city, while an independent local report counted more than 3,000 at the demonstration.
The dispute is about both pay and industrial power. IG Metall is demanding a 5 percent wage increase over 12 months and €110 more each month for apprentices. It also wants profit-sharing in highly profitable firms, stronger gains for lower-paid grades and enforceable protection for jobs and production sites.
The Bavarian metal and electrical employers’ association, vbm, has offered a one-off payment equal to 1 percent of average annual tariff pay in July 2027 and a 1.3 percent rise in base rates beginning in July 2028, under a contract lasting through the end of that year. Vbm says the package is fair in an industry facing high costs and weak demand, and argues that IG Metall should retreat from what it calls excessive demands. The union says delaying a small permanent rise for 20 months would lock in a real-wage loss.
Monday’s third round closed with the two sides still apart. IG Metall proposed temporary departures from sector standards for companies in difficulty, but only in exchange for binding investment and guarantees covering plants, jobs and training. Vbm said that proposal was not a genuine offer but a rejection of its terms. Both sides said they would continue talking.
The warning strikes therefore matter as more than a bargaining ritual. Employers want a settlement that shifts the risks of Germany’s industrial slowdown toward labor costs. Workers are answering that competitiveness cannot mean carrying the adjustment through wages, insecure apprenticeships and factory closures while management preserves unilateral control over investment.
The scale of the action is already national. IG Metall says more than 400,000 workers have participated in 3,800 warning-strike actions since the no-strike obligation expired at the end of October. The bargaining process covers roughly 3.7 million workers in Germany’s metal and electrical industries, but negotiations take place by regional district. Reuters independently reported that workers at companies including Audi, Mercedes-Benz and Tata Steel had joined the escalating stoppages last week.
The Bavarian turnout also connects to a wider European argument over who should pay for economic uncertainty. French unions have pressed their government for a wage rise amid political crisis, while tenant organizers in Madrid have called for Spain’s first joint general strike in 14 years around housing and pay. In each case, organized workers are refusing the claim that falling purchasing power should be treated as an unavoidable adjustment.
IG Metall’s Nuremberg leadership called Monday the final warning before a possible escalation to full-day warning strikes and preparations for a strike ballot. That threat has weight because it links pay to production. A march can be ignored; coordinated stoppages at Audi, Bosch, MAN and Siemens cannot. If employers keep their offer below the loss workers have already absorbed, the union’s next decision will be whether to convert a rolling warning into a more sustained confrontation.
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