Wage step for 3,000 bakers: East achieves wage parity with the West!

Wage step for 3,000 bakers: East achieves wage parity with the West!

In an impressive step, the Food, Pleasure and Restaurants union (NGG) recently achieved a significant wage adjustment for employees in the East bread industry. This affects around 3,000 employees of large baked goods manufacturers, and the collective agreement provides for a gradual adjustment of wages to the highest collective bargaining level in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein. How barnim-aktuell.de reported, employees can look forward to a wage increase of 1.1% from February 2025, followed by a further increase of 3% on June 1, 2025. The full adjustment of wages to the West German level is then planned for December 1, 2025. The collective bargaining negotiations so far this year are expecting a wage increase of up to 5.6% for employees in the east bread industry.

Uwe Ledwig, the negotiator and chairman of NGG Ost, sees this agreement as a great success for the employees. He emphasizes that this is an important step in strengthening the union in the companies. By the way, with this collective bargaining agreement, the NGG is also making a furious push against wage discrimination between East and West Germany.

Details of the collective agreement

The collective agreement is no coincidence, but was negotiated in a joint effort with the Association of German Bakeries. Such an approach could also serve as a model for other ongoing collective bargaining negotiations in western German regions. A further wage increase of 2.4% is also planned for October 2026, which will further strengthen the negotiations. The goal is clear: The NGG would like to initiate broad, nationwide discussions about bonuses, special holidays and other collective bargaining elements in order to further improve working conditions in the industry, as can also be seen from the information from dgb.de results.

The background to these developments is that the East bread industry is heavily dominated by companies such as Harry-Brot GmbH, the largest German baked goods manufacturer, and the Lieken Group, which belongs to the Czech Agrofert Group. The effects of collective bargaining will therefore not only benefit the employees of the big players in the industry, but also smaller companies, such as the Wittenberg Bakery, which, with around 400 employees, are also covered by the collective agreement.

The status of collective bargaining

The latest developments in the bread industry also shed light on the general situation of collective bargaining in Germany. Loud bpb.de In 2018, collective bargaining coverage fell to 54%, a worrying development compared to 67% in 2000.
In eastern Germany in particular, collective bargaining coverage is 45%, below the western level of 56%. Although the Federal Republic has a relatively low level of strike propensity compared to international standards, the progress achieved through union negotiations, such as in the East Bread Industry, is an important signal for the entire industry.

This shows that a good hand in collective bargaining not only adjusts wages, but also increases the appreciation of employees and sends a clear signal for fair working conditions. In the coming months we will be excited to see how the negotiations that have already been scheduled and the associated tariff increases will develop. With this collective agreement, the East Bread Industry has taken a significant step in the right direction, which many other industries should follow in order to make wages fair and support employees.