DBV Enters Collective Bargaining Rounds with Private Banks with Comprehensive, Up-to-Date Demands

The German Bank Employees’ Association (DBV) is entering the 2026 collective bargaining round for the private banking sector with a demand for a 9.5 percent wage increase over a 24-month period. It is not only the sharp increase in profits at many financial institutions that must, at least in part, be returned to those who made those profits possible in the first place. In addition, real wages are still below the 2019 baseline. And AI, too, by no means automatically reduces the workload—as is often claimed—but rather, the truly complex, “non-automation-friendly” customer issues and procedural hurdles are now concentrated even more than before on employees, who need compensation for this…