Jörg Hofmann: “IG Metall supports the preventive measures taken in some companies today in order to protect production workers from the spread of the Corona virus and, where possible, to temporarily stop production. While most of the employees can react with home offices, there is no other alternative in large parts of the production to protect the employees to the same extent. Prerequisites for this kind of action are subsidy payments from the employer to secure net remuneration for short-time work. Insofar as these are not already regulated by collective bargaining today, IG Metall offers to come to appropriate regulations at short notice. Otherwise, the production workers face short-time working losses of up to 40 percent. On this issue too, production workers must not be discriminated against other groups of workers who have the option of working on the move. The companies in the automotive industry that have announced the shutdown of their plants today have corresponding regulations in place. It is now up to the employers’ organizations to come up with comprehensive regulations at short notice. ”