Dortmund (dpa / lnw) – A good 500 employees at the North Rhine-Westphalian locations of the beverage giant Coca-Cola laid down their work on Thursday during a warning strike. At a rally in Dortmund, they demanded a monthly salary increase of 400 euros and more money for trainees. The company’s offer so far is a “slap in the face” to the employees, said Freddy Adjan, who negotiates for the union Food-Genuss-Gaststätten (NGG).
In December, the employer side announced a wage plus of 100 euros per month and a one-time inflation compensation premium of 1000 euros. Adjan said that what is important is a table-based wage increase, not the one-off payment. “Prices won’t go down anytime soon, so higher wage agreements are needed.”
The group’s negotiator, Gero Ludwig, on the other hand, spoke of an economically challenging time with high inflation, which hit employers and employees alike. One follows with the offer of the federal government, which recommends a tax-free one-time payment with simultaneous moderate wage settlements.
Negotiations will continue on Wednesday. The NGG announced further labor disputes if there was no agreement. “Then we will go into conflicts that Coca-Cola has not yet had,” said Adjan. He spoke of longer warning strikes up to indefinite strikes. One-day warning strikes had recently also taken place in other federal states. Coca-Cola has 28 locations in Germany. In NRW there are locations in Cologne, Herten, Dorsten, Mönchengladbach and Bielefeld.
