IG Metall, Germany's biggest industrial union, rejected employers' first formal pay offer in a dispute over wages for factory workers and warned it might step up a campaign of brief strikes that saw 47,000 workers walk off the job on Thursday. The union wants a 5 percent raise this year for some 3.4 million workers across Germany. Employers have offered increases of 1.2 percent this year and next plus variable one-time payments.
See "German Union Rejects Employers' Offer", Associated Press, The New York Times, April 5, 2006