21SEP

ver.di bargains over jobs, not pay-offs

2 min read

16:45UTC

ver.di confirmed a 3.3% second-step pay rise from 1 September and opened talks with the employers' association AGV on a sector-wide transformation contract covering site protection, a dismissal ban and retraining.

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Key takeaway

ver.di wants redeployment and site guarantees, not better terms for being sacked.

ver.di, Germany's services union, confirmed that the second step of its insurance-sector wage deal, a 3.3% rise, took effect on 1 September 2026, and that it has opened a separate negotiation with the employers' association AGV (Arbeitgeberverband der Versicherungsunternehmen, the German insurance employers' body) over a sector-wide Tarifvertrag Transformation⁠¹. The draft covers location protection, a ban on operational dismissals and reskilling programmes modelled on Ergo's in-house academy. A third round meets in Wuerzburg in October. Around 2,500 AI-attributed cuts have already been announced across the sector, 1,500 at Allianz Partners and 1,000 at Ergo⁠².

German redundancy law is strong and it protects the people already inside the building; it has nothing whatever to say about a post that is never advertised. Severance terms are the wrong instrument for a problem that generates no severance, so ver.di has gone after retraining budgets, site guarantees and a commitment to keep the internal door open.

Germany already built the legal frame around AI deployment when the Bundesrat approved the AI Act's national enforcement law in July. Collective bargaining turns that frame into terms an employer must actually observe. A sector-wide Tarifvertrag binds every firm in the employers' association, which is why this negotiation matters more than a works-council deal at a single insurer. If Wuerzburg produces a dismissal ban without a hiring or headcount commitment attached, the contract protects incumbents completely and leaves the entry point exactly as exposed as it was before anyone sat down.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

German insurance workers just got a 3.3% pay rise, but the more significant part of this story is what their union, ver.di, is negotiating next: a separate agreement specifically about AI's effect on jobs. The union wants three things written into a binding contract: protection for where jobs are based, a ban on dismissals linked to the change, and a right to retraining. A third round of talks is due in Wuerzburg in October. What makes this possible is a feature of German labour law that does not exist everywhere: employers have to consult worker representatives before rolling out new technology that changes working conditions, giving unions a seat at the table before decisions are made rather than only a complaint process afterwards.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

German labour law gives unions a lever most of their counterparts elsewhere in Europe do not have. The Works Constitution Act requires employers to consult works councils before introducing new technology that affects working conditions, which is why ver.di can put location protection, a dismissal ban and reskilling on the table as a single negotiated package rather than reacting to job losses after the fact.

That institutional head start is also why Germany's insurance-sector agreement is being watched as a template: the same co-determination structure exists across German industry, so whatever the sector-wide Tarifvertrag Transformation ultimately contains is likely to shape how other German unions frame their own AI-era bargaining demands.

What could happen next?

Precedent
If the sector-wide Tarifvertrag Transformation is signed, it becomes a template other German sector unions are likely to cite in their own AI-era bargaining rounds.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Consensus view: Germany's Institute for Employment Research (IAB), the Nuremberg-based federal research body that has tracked task-level automation potential across German industries for over a decade, has consistently rated insurance and financial-services back-office roles among the most substitutable white-collar work in the economy, which is the backdrop against which ver.di is negotiating protections before, not after, job losses appear.

Counter-view: Employer bodies such as AGV typically resist binding dismissal bans on the grounds that a blanket prohibition removes the flexibility firms need to redeploy staff as AI changes which tasks require how many people, arguing that protections should attach to individuals through retraining rather than to job counts through a ban.

Key tension: Whether a sector-wide dismissal ban can meaningfully protect jobs against a general-purpose productivity tool that reduces headcount need gradually across many roles, rather than a specific machine that displaces one identifiable job at a time.

Sources:ver.di

Mentions:ver.di →AGV →Allianz Partners →Ergo →Bundesrat →Germany →EU AI Act →

First Reported In

Update #20 · AI closes the hiring door, not the exit

ver.di· 21 Sept 2026

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Causes and effects

This Event

ver.di bargains over jobs, not pay-offs

A union bargaining for retraining and location guarantees rather than severance has decided the adjustment runs through hiring, not redundancy.

Led to

German insurers and ver.di miss AI deal

The Würzburg round was the third of the talks ver.di opened with AGV in September on a Tarifvertrag Transformation.

Occurred 15 Oct 2026

Read story →

Different Perspectives

Korea's four largest banks, as reported by News1

KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana and Woori rehired 1,013 retirees last year, equal to 79.1% of their graduate intake, according to News1. Graduates face a smaller entry intake while returners take fixed-term credit-screening roles at lower pay, News1 reports.

High Court of Justice of Madrid

The court's employment chamber ruled in judgment 864/2026, dated 8 October and made public in early November, that introducing AI is not on its own a ground for dismissal. Employers must prove AI's effect through the four causes the Workers' Statute already lists.

Singapore Ministry of Manpower

The Singapore Ministry of Manpower put third-quarter retrenchments at 4,800, concentrated in information and communications, financial services and manufacturing, with business reorganisation the main driver. Its release does not mention AI.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas

Challenger reported on 5 November that market and economic conditions overtook AI as the leading stated reason for 2026's US job cuts, at 130,531 against 121,401. AI was cited for 1,265 cuts in October, its lowest month of the year.

Office for Budget Responsibility

The OBR's 28 October outlook showed output per worker in information and communication growing 7.6% a year, yet kept AI's boost to UK productivity at 0.2 percentage points a year. It does not attribute the faster growth to AI.

Central Bank of Ireland

Governor Gabriel Makhlouf said on 2 November that AI investment has supported Irish activity and flagged the debt financing behind it as a financial-stability risk. On jobs, he named skills bottlenecks and mismatches, not job losses.

Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.