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INDUSTRY & TRADE

IG Metall begins key wage negotiations

Germany's biggest industrial trade union IG Metall started wage talks with employers Thursday seeking an eight-percent pay hike for 3.6 million workers in the metalworking and electronics industries.

Published: 2 October 2008 13:59 CEST
IG Metall begins key wage negotiations
Photo: DPA

The demand during the first round of pay negotiations is the highest the union has sought in 16 years and has jacked up tensions with industry as Germany faces an economic slowdown.

Representatives from IG Metall and the employers’ federation gathered in the western city of Darmstadt for talks that would initially cover the states of Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland for a 12-month period.

In Germany pay negotiations begin simultaneously in several regions and the first to reach an accord serves as a guideline for the rest of the country. Current pay accords in the auto, IT and household goods industries expire on October 31 so the outcome will be closely watched by all sides, including car makers like BMW, Mercedes and Volkswagen, and industrial giants like Siemens.

IG Metall argues that manufacturing workers have failed to benefit from several years of robust economic growth, and has threatened warning strikes from November if its demands are not met. “Conditions in the parts of the economy that produce goods and services are stable,” union chairman Berthold Huber told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Thursday. “I am not saying things will keep moving upwards but I know that our much talked about traditional industry with its manufacturing output and force for innovation has moved this country forward. Look at countries such as the United States and Britain that have jeopardised it. It is a complete disaster.”

IG Metall estimates that profits in the metalworking and electronics

sectors soared 220 percent between 2004 and 2007. But employers group Gesamtmetall has blasted the union’s demand for an

eight-percent wage hike as “completely exaggerated” in light of a looming economic downturn. It has offered a smaller pay hike and a one-off payment.

The European Central Bank has also warned against too generous pay increases which could spur rising inflation. The negotiations are likely to be extremely acrimonious and set the tone for other pay settlements across Europe’s largest, export-driven economy.

Economy Minister Michael Glos said last week that the German government will have to “markedly revise downward” its economic growth forecast for 2009 – currently at 1.2 percent – due to the global financial crisis.

FARMING

WTO rules US tariffs on Spanish olives breach rules

A US decision to slap steep import duties on Spanish olives over claims they benefited from subsidies constituted a violation of international trade rules, the World Trade Organisation ruled Friday.

Published: 22 November 2021 11:34 CET
WTO rules US tariffs on Spanish olives breach rules
Farmers had just begun harvesting olives in southern Spain when former US President Donald Trump soured the mood with the tariffs' announcement. Photo: Jorge Guerrero/AFP

Former US president Donald Trump’s administration slapped extra tariffs on Spain’s iconic agricultural export in 2018, considering their olives were subsidised and being dumped on the US market at prices below their real value.

The combined rates of the anti-subsidy and anti-dumping duties go as high as 44 percent.

The European Commission, which handles trade policy for the 27 EU states, said the move was unacceptable and turned to the WTO, where a panel of experts was appointed to examine the case.

In Friday’s ruling, the WTO panel agreed with the EU’s argument that the anti-subsidy duties were illegal.

But it did not support its stance that the US anti-dumping duties violated international trade rules.

The panel said it “recommended that the United States bring its measures into conformity with its obligations”.

EU trade commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis hailed the ruling, pointing out that the US duties “severely hit Spanish olive producers.”

Demonstrators take part in a 2019 protest in Madrid, called by the olive sector
Demonstrators take part in a 2019 protest in Madrid called by the olive sector to denounce low prices of olive oil and the 25 percent tariff that Spanish olives and olive oil faced in the United States. (Photo by PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU / AFP)
 

“We now expect the US to take the appropriate steps to implement the WTO ruling, so that exports of ripe olives from Spain to the US can resume under normal conditions,” he said.

The European Commission charges that Spain’s exports of ripe olives to the United States, which previously raked in €67 million ($75.6 million) annually, have shrunk by nearly 60 percent since the duties were imposed.

The office of the US Trade Representative in Washington did not immediately comment on the ruling.

According to WTO rules, the parties have 60 days to file for an appeal.

If the United States does file an appeal though, it would basically amount to a veto of the ruling.

That is because the WTO Appellate Body — also known as the supreme court of world trade — stopped functioning in late 2019 after Washington blocked the appointment of new judges.

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