Frankfurt am Main – On Crafts Day (September 21st), the IG Metall union is calling for better training conditions in the industry. Given that there are tens of thousands of still unfilled training positions, IG Metall collective bargaining and crafts director Nadine Boguslawski is calling on companies to become more attractive to young talent with more binding collective bargaining regulations: “With the mobility, energy and heat transition, the crafts are a crucial basis a better future. Even if the number of training courses for air conditioning professions such as electrical engineers or system mechanics for plumbing, heating and air conditioning is increasing slightly, the actual need for young talent is far from being met.
When it comes to training remuneration and the struggle for tomorrow’s skilled workers, the craft sector lags behind other sectors. According to a current survey by the Economic and Social Sciences Institute of the Hans Böckler Foundation, even trainees in the automotive trade with salaries of 979 euros in the first year of training are only in the middle range of all training salaries.
According to IG Metall, training in the companies themselves also needs to be improved. Every second trainee in the entire trade does not have a company training plan, and every fifth (19.4%) has to do work that is not related to their training. A third of trainees (35.6%) regularly have to work overtime, an average of 4.1 hours per week. One in ten (11.6%) receives no compensation such as free time or money. This was the result of the 2023 training report from the German Federation of Trade Unions (DGB) for the skilled trades.
IG Metall collective bargaining and crafts director Boguslawski: “The best advertising for skilled trades is better training conditions for the skilled workers of tomorrow. The best seal of quality for companies is attractive collective agreements.” According to IG Metall, only around 30 percent of employees in the trades benefit from collective agreements, and around 60 percent of young skilled workers move to other industries after training. IG Metall is therefore committed, among other things, to the future trade dialogue between trade unions, the Central Association of Crafts (ZDH) and the Federal Ministry of Economics for better framework conditions in the trades.