BERLIN, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Rainer Dulger, president of the Federation of German Employers' Associations in the Metal and Electrical Engineering Industries (Gesamtmetall), threatened to end the collective wage agreement with Germany's largest trade union IG Metall on Tuesday.
The last round of collective bargaining had led to a "very, very high result" that had caused members to resign, Dulger told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung and threatened that "if all companies leave the collective bargaining agreement, the union can see how it gets its way through in-house fighting".
After several weeks of strikes, IG Metall achieved a 4.3 percent increase in wages. Employees in the German metal and engineering industries were also able to choose between eight additional days off or a special payment in July this year.
The collective wage agreement between Gesamtmetall and IG Metall was effecting 1.9 million employees in the German metal and electrical industries which employ over 4 million people in Germany.
IG Metall was overburdening many companies by demanding too high wages and too much leisure time, which was leading to more and more resignations at Gesamtmetall, Dulger said.
Strikes during the collective bargaining round last year cost the German metal and electrical engineering industries three million working hours, which was "three times as many as the years before," according to Dulger.
The German employers had "not been able" to defend themselves against the strikes, Dulger told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung and emphasized that it was about "the acceptance of the collective bargaining system as a whole".
"IG Metall always makes the biggest rows in those companies that are particularly committed to the collective bargaining agreement," criticized Dulger.
The current state of the collective wage agreement in the German metal and electrical engineering industries was a cause for concern, emphasized Dulger, "both in terms of the companies' collective bargaining obligations and the competitiveness of the industry."
