German Industrial Union on Strike-Auto Workers Walk

STUTTGART, Germany, AP is reporting that the first strike by Germany's largest industrial union in seven years moved into full gear Monday as thousands of auto workers joined the stoppage, which many fear could slow the recovery of Europe's biggest economy.

The 2.7 million-member IG Metall union called on 50,000 workers at several plants in southwestern Germany, including U.S. tractor maker John Deere's plant in Mannheim, to strike for one day.

The union focused its attention on the Stuttgart headquarters of luxury carmaker Porsche after the strike was launched Sunday night by the overnight shift at DaimlerChrysler AG's Sindelfingen plant.

Union officials handed out coffee and pretzels to several hundred people carrying red union flags -- many of them sporting red plastic vests emblazoned with the words "we're on strike" -- who gathered in the early-morning cold outside the Porsche works, where 2,500 members walked out.

"We are beginning a difficult task, and we don't know how difficult it will be," said union head Klaus Zwickel, addressing the Porsche workers from a stage in front of the gates. He said the strike would continue "until we get an acceptable result."

Zwickel said the union would be ready to negotiate if employers improved their offer. Pay talks broke down April 19 after the union rejected an offer of a 3.3 percent increase for 15 months, and the employers said they would not offer anything more.

"Zwickel won't get a new offer from us," the chief negotiator for employers in southwestern Baden-Wuerttemberg state, Ottmar Zwiebelhofer, told ARD television. "We went to the upper limit of what we could manage with our offer."

The union says it wants a 6.5 percent pay increase in a one-year deal to compensate workers for insufficient increases in the past, inflation and higher productivity. Observers expect it to settle for less.

IG Metall, which also represents workers in electronics and machine building, plans a series of one-day stoppages at major employers in Baden-Wuerttemberg, a heartland of German manufacturing. It was targeting 20 companies in the state Monday, including Audi, two more DaimlerChrysler plants and the John Deere plant.

IG Metall members earn an average of around $1,800 a month plus benefits including six weeks of paid vacation and bonuses.

Michael Rogowski, the head of the Federation of German Industry, the country's main employers' body, has said the union demands are "madness" given the country's feeble economic situation.

Zwiebelhofer noted that the employers have pledged not to retaliate with lockouts, insisting that "we want to keep the damage as small as possible."

The union called its first strike since 1995 despite appeals from Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder for a wage deal that would not snuff out the beginning of economic recovery in Germany, which suffered a mild recession in the second half of last year.

A Social Democrat who relies on union support, Schroeder faces tough parliamentary elections in September. Conservative challenger Edmund Stoiber, the governor of Bavaria, has lambasted Schroeder for the country's sluggish growth and its 1 percent unemployment rate.

"We are not on strike against Schroeder ... or against anyone," Zwickel said. "We are on strike for a good result."

Any wage settlement in Baden-Wuerttemberg is expected to set the pattern for workers across Germany. Most contracts are negotiated between unions and regional employer associations representing entire industries, not company by company.

The union could have shut plants down completely, but has said it chose only to slow them down with one-day strikes in order to save jobs and avoid a chain reaction creating layoffs at other plants.

Some workers were unhappy with the tactic.

"This is not a strike," said Karl Keller, a paint-shop worker who has been at Porsche for 19 years. "What are they losing?"