Germany : amid problems renewing the industrial cleaning sector agreement, the IG BAU union accuses companies of profiting from the situation

With the industrial cleaning sector’s social partners unable to successfully conclude collective agreement renewal negotiations that commenced at the start of August and that will affect 650,000 sector employees, the IG BAU construction union has found an effective way of applying pressure on employers, namely since 07 October 2019 it is using its website to ‘call-out’ companies it deems are profiting from the lack of a framework agreement in order to impose less favorable working conditions on their staff. The move testifies to growing tension between the social partners at a time when an increasing number of companies are withdrawing from sector collective agreements and thus weakening the collective negotiation process (c.f. article No. 11400).