German industry workers demonstrate for more pay

IG Mettal UnionHamburg - Thousands of German factory workers walked off their jobs Tuesday and attended demonstrations, demanding wage rises of 8 per cent on the fourth day of nationwide labour disruption.

In the port city of Hamburg, 5,000 repair workers left a riverside shipyard and trooped through a pair of 100-year-old tunnels originally built for horse-and-buggy traffic to reach the other side of the river for one of the biggest rallies.

Thousands more arrived by bus. Waving red union flags, the worker crowd cheered as speakers listed engineering industry sites idled by the one-day strike, including a giant Airbus jetliner factory a couple of kilometres down-river.

Their union, IG Metall, is leading rolling strikes this week all over Germany, with each site shut down for a day. Tuesday was the first day that factories in practically every state were affected.

"The offer from employers to raise pay by 2.1 per cent is a mockery. We'll never accept it," the union's national leader, Berthold Huber, told the Hamburg crowd. "We want decent pay for decent work."

The union's demand for an 8-per-cent hike is its biggest for 16 years in the pay cycle, which usually runs for two years.

The union says labour has helped investors and itself fallen far behind in years of sacrifice. IG Metall has shrugged off appeals to moderate demands now because of the global economic downturn.

Huber told the crowd it was "utter cheek" that labour was now being expected to pay the penalty for the financial crisis. IG Metall said 10,000 strikers had been asked to attend the Hamburg event, and smaller rallies were held in other centres.

The union, Germany's most militant and powerful, grants strike pay to dues-paying members who take part in walkouts.

The strikes are directed at about 23,000 companies which are the backbone of Germany's export-led economy, making cars, industrial plant and electronic equipment, according to data from the employers' group Gesamtmetall. (dpa)

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