Volkswagen Slovakia workers win wage hike, end strike

Workers at Volkswagen Slovakia attend a rally at the start of a strike over unmet demands for a 16-per cent pay raise on Jun 20, 2017. (AFP/VLADIMIR SIMICEK)

"We are ending our strike," trade union chief Zoroslav Smolinsky told journalists after marathon negotiations with the bosses at the Bratislava plant.

VW spokeswoman Lucia Kovarovic Makayova told AFP that the agreed 14.1 per cent pay rise will be made in three instalments and completed by November 2018.

Workers will also get a one-off bonus of €500 and an extra day off, according to the spokeswoman.

Currently, the average salary in the Bratislava VW plant is €1,800 (US$2,014), excluding managers' pay packets, according to the company.

Slovakia's average salary is €980.

Workers launched the strike on Tuesday after management rejected union demands for a 16 per cent wage hike, offering an eight per cent rise instead.

Smolinsky said that up to 10,000 of the plant's 12,300 employees downed tools for the first time since production began at the site in 1992.

The strike stopped the production of luxury SUVs like the Touareg or the Audi Q7.

Slovakia's leftist Prime Minister Robert Fico supported the workers' wage demands.

"If we know that there is the highest productivity and the highest quality in Bratislava, they produce the most expensive cars in the whole company, why should workers here earn one third of the salary of their (German) colleagues in the same company?", Fico told a local radio station on Saturday.

According to the Slovak autoworkers union, the starting salary in German VW factories is €2,037, while in Slovakia it is €679.

The strike was peaceful as workers laid down blankets, played cards and cooled off in a fountain outside the VW plant amid a heatwave that saw temperatures soar to 30 degrees Celsius Bratislava in recent days.

The factory produces more than 1,000 cars a day and a total 388,697 vehicles rolled off its production line last year.

Models include the luxury Porsche Cayenne, Volkswagen Touareg and Audi Q7 vehicles, among others.

The new Lamborghini Urus luxury cars will also be made using parts produced in Bratislava.

The five-millionth car produced in the plant rolled off the production line on June 15th. The white Touareg was produced for a customer in Australia.

Last year, just over a million automobiles were produced in Slovakian factories owned by Kia, Peugeot and VW.