BERLIN, Sept 24: Negotiations between Airbus and the IG Metall union on a work agreement for 16,000 employees in Germany have broken down, opening the way for possible strike action, the union said on Saturday.

“After nearly 12 hours, the employers ended the negotiations. They remain inflexible on raising the productivity rate to eight per cent a year. We can’t demand that of our colleagues,” two of the IG Metall negotiators, Daniel Friedrich and Johann Dahnken, said in a statement.

The failure to reach an agreement came as a surprise after a year and a half of efforts appeared to be about to come to fruition.

The work pact covers a range of issues from an employment guarantee in the coming years to a ceiling on hiring temporary workers.

Before the latest round of talks in Hamburg an Airbus spokesman told AFP that negotiations were “near finishing” and that there had been “a lot of progress” recently and they expected to complete the talks “in the next few days.” The spokesman also said the aircraft maker was asking for a five per cent productivity rate, not eight per cent.—AFP