A new five-year pay deal has been concluded for temporary agency workers in Germany’s engineering sector.
Although in principle Germany follows the legal basis of equal pay for equal work, this rule was liberalised as part of the Hartz reforms for the temporary employment sector – which means that unskilled temporary workers in particular can have their basic pay up to 40% lower than that of permanent employees in the same company, provided that a collective bargaining agreement for permanent employees is in place at their place of temporary work. The new agreement provides temporary agency workers with enhanced pay rights for longer assignments. These range from basic pay, plus 15% for assignments lasting between six weeks and three months to basic pay, plus 50% for assignments of nine months or more. In Germany around 900,000 employees are currently employed through temporary agencies, around 240,000 of which are working in the engineering industries covered by the IG Metall deal. Around 50% of these are unskilled workers.