Frankfurt am Main – In the opinion of IG Metall and the General Works Council, ALSTOM is once again violating the future collective agreement, which covers six of these companies, by implementing its latest program to cut over 90 jobs in the indirect areas of twelve companies. The future collective agreement was terminated by IG Metall over four months ago, but the company insists on its validity so that it can continue to withhold the employees’ money. For IG Metall and the general works council, this job cut is further evidence that ALSTOM never intended to make the German locations fit for the future again in accordance with collective agreements and to supply them with new orders. In order to be able to continue to withhold holiday pay, ALSTOM has filed a representative action with IG Metall. The first court hearing will be in mid-October to determine whether the termination was legal. The company apparently hopes to be able to avoid thousands of lawsuits from employees demanding payment of their vacation pay.
In addition, at the end of September, the company again announced industrial decisions that will affect the Hennigsdorf, Mannheim, Görlitz and possible other locations. According to the plans, Hennigsdorf will largely lose its production of new vehicles and Mannheim will lose all of its production. The Görlitz company, which stands for 175 years of railway tradition, is to be sold. The body shell manufacturing expertise of this location will therefore be abandoned. According to IG Metall and the General Works Council, the ALSTOM strategy of investing heavily in the so-called best cost countries in order to have production there leads to significantly more delays and quality defects compared to other industry giants. The employees in the German factories have to compensate for these deficits, sometimes with considerable additional effort and a corresponding negative result in this country.
Due to the employer’s inaction, IG Metall is demanding back the employees’ holiday pay provided in the future collective agreement: around 3,500 employees have submitted so-called claims, which are pending as lawsuits before the responsible labor courts. The German management had already announced at the end of May that it did not want to pay out the vacation pay that was actually due in June. This should have happened in part or in full if certain productivity levels were achieved, as set out in the collective agreement. However, the company has not yet been able to plausibly calculate the possible payback in accordance with the collective agreement for the last financial year (04/2023 to 03/2024). Since the necessary provisions were not made for repayment, repayment by ALSTOM was apparently never planned. In addition, ALSTOM did not pay out the additional wage B (T-ZUG B) to employees in June due to the financial situation. However, when the future collective agreement is concluded and accepted by the employer, this collectively agreed benefit should not be counted as part of the employee’s contributions.
René Straube, Chairman of the ALSTOM General Works Council: “Today it is clear that it was all just a stalling tactic: the management superficially carried out some symbolic actions in accordance with the future collective agreement and behind the scenes continued to pursue its own agenda for Germany. This willfully and deliberately damaged the basis of trust towards the general works council and the workforce. This means we are on the way to a tough confrontation.”
Jochen Homburg, IG Metall negotiator: “The railway is the future. There is no better means of mass transport that protects the environment and resources at the same time. It is incomprehensible that ALSTOM is so against its own employees and their representatives in such a future market. In this way you deprive yourself of your opportunities and the employees of their rightful wages.”
The future collective agreement affected the six Hennigsdorf companies with Hennigsdorf Drives, Görlitz, Bautzen, Siegen and Kassel. In order to secure the locations and jobs, the employees agreed to initially make financial contributions – essentially their vacation pay – as insurance. In return, the company committed to investing in the German locations in order to make them competitive again after years of neglect. However, ALSTOM did not implement this as planned. IG Metall was then forced to terminate the collective agreement and is now demanding the employees’ withheld money back. The employers’ association Gesamtmetall filed a lawsuit against what it considered to be unlawful dismissal. The forced termination of a future collective agreement by IG Metall due to ALSTOM’s inaction is unprecedented.