New leadership for IG Metall

The leadership crisis in Germany's largest industrial union IG Metall seemed on course for solution, at least temporarily, as Labour Research went to press.

The special session of the union's four-yearly congress on 29 to 31 August, dealing only with elections, looked certain to back Jürgen Peters as president and Berthold Huber as his deputy after a special meeting of the executive agreed to support the joint ticket.

In a joint statement, Peters and Huber who are seen to come from opposite sides of the debate in IG Metall, declared their "willingness to work together on all issues".

However, the row at the top of the union has already cost membership. According to the financial daily Handelsblatt, some 25,000 members left the union, which has 2.6m members, in July, around one third the number the union lost in the whole of 2002.