IG Metall had just pushed through a wage increase of 8.5 percent in its sectors.

But she didn't get any praise from the workforce for a good collective bargaining agreement - the mood was bad.

At a meeting of 1,000 IG Metall officials in Cologne's Flora in early 1973, they broke through into their ranks.

The collective agreement was "completely inadequate in view of the galloping inflation".

This is how a review of the “Metallzeitung” summarizes the discussion at the time.

Dietrich Creutzburg

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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IG Metall found itself in a quandary: the resentment among the workforce had two causes.

In addition to the inflation, a new mood of protest in the rapidly growing group of so-called guest workers - who saw their interests represented neither by the union nor by anyone else - contributed to this.

And so a wave of "wildcat strikes" began.

Despite the contractual obligation to keep peace and without the active involvement of IG Metall, employees rebelled.

What does that have to do with today?

The current rates of inflation have awakened unpleasant memories – of the time when money continued to depreciate and energy prices rose sharply.

And so a term with an eerie undertone returned: wage-price spiral.

He represents what can go wrong when unions take the offensive at such times;

if they try with all their might to fight the consequences of inflation by even higher wage agreements for their people.

It easily sets in motion a self-reinforcing interplay of monetary devaluation.

A chain reaction

In the Ford works in Cologne, the conflict reached its first climax on August 24, 1973, after Ford fired 300 Turks who had not returned on time from home leave.

"12,000 workers occupied the factory gates and elected their own strike committees," according to the report.

"Ford stopped production, sent workers home." Four days later, the works council reached a negotiation result with the company management: "Payment for the strike days, 280 DM cost-of-living allowance, withdrawal of layoffs upon presentation of certificates."

But that was not a solution to the problem.

The great oil crisis, caused by a supply freeze by the oil-exporting countries, was still to come.

It drove the inflation rate in 1973 to 7.1 percent on an annual average.

And so it came about that in 1974 the unions really got involved in the next regular wage rounds, also in order to close their own ranks again.

The ÖTV achieved a plus of 11 percent in the public sector.

IG Metall even managed 11.6 percent.

However, higher wages also mean higher costs for companies.

But they were already heavily burdened by the shortage of oil and production was slowed down.

The consumer demand fueled by the wage settlements therefore did not primarily fuel production, but fueled further price increases.

It was to last until 1976

Who pays for the crisis?

Hagen Lesch, tariff researcher at the employer-related Institute of German Economics (IW), explains it like this: If an external price shock hits the economy, i.e. more has to be paid to foreign suppliers for oil or gas, for example, the domestic level of prosperity falls.

"If the trade unions then demand inflation adjustments at any price in their collective bargaining rounds, it is actually a social struggle for distribution over who will bear the losses." This is reminiscent of the motto behind which critics of the bank bailout rallied in the financial crisis of 2009: "We don't pay for your crisis."