The iGZ Collective Agreement: What Pay Grades and Supplements Mean for Clients

What used to be called the iGZ collective agreement has been the DGB/GVP collective agreement since 1 January 2026: nine pay grades plus industry supplements set what a German temp-staffing agency must pay its workers – and therefore what it charges its client. A company that hires through a staffing agency never sees this agreement directly, but it shows up on every invoice.

This article stays with the agreement itself: pay grades, industry supplements, how iGZ and BAP relate to today's GVP, and what any of that means for the client's bill. The Temporary Employment Act as a whole is covered in our piece on the AÜG, and the equal-pay calculation in detail in our piece on equal pay in temp staffing.

Who negotiates this agreement, and what changed when iGZ and BAP merged into GVP?

Until the end of 2023, two separate employer associations each ran their own collective agreement: the Interessenverband Deutscher Zeitarbeitsunternehmen (iGZ) and the Bundesarbeitgeberverband der Personaldienstleister (BAP). According to the association's own announcement, both were dissolved on 1 December 2023 and merged, under German transformation law, into the newly formed Gesamtverband der Personaldienstleister e. V. (GVP) (source: personaldienstleister.de, merger press release, retrieved 10 September 2026). The GVP has negotiated a joint agreement with the DGB unions ever since.

In practice, the two pay tables kept running separately under one association roof for a while. Only on 1 January 2026 did a single DGB/GVP collective agreement take effect, replacing the previously separate iGZ and BAP agreements. Anyone searching for "iGZ-Tarifvertrag" today is almost always looking for this successor agreement – the iGZ name lives on as a search term, but not as an independent negotiating party.

How are the pay grades structured?

The agreement sorts temp workers into nine pay grades by qualification and task: from simple helper work (grade 1), through a completed apprenticeship plus experience (grade 4), up to work requiring a university degree and management responsibility (grade 9). New in the current agreement is an automatic seniority premium: anyone employed longer than nine months by the same staffing agency gets 1.5 percent on top of the base hourly rate, rising to 3.0 percent after twelve months – regardless of pay grade.

Source and reference date: personaldienstleister.de, pay tables under the DGB/GVP collective agreement, table "from 01 Sep 2026 / from 01 Apr 2027", retrieved 10 September 2026. The base table that took effect on 1 January 2026 sits exclusively behind the GVP member area, so it is not quoted here.

What are industry supplements, and how do they kick in?

On top of the base rate, individual client industries have their own industry-supplement agreements (TV BZ) – for example metal and electrical, chemicals, or plastics processing. The supplement is a percentage added to the tariff rate that rises with how long the worker has been assigned to the same client site. In metal and electrical (TV BZ ME), the first step has applied from day one of the assignment since a 2023 change – earlier versions of the agreement still had a six-week waiting period.

Source and reference date: TV BZ ME pay table "from 01 Sep 2026 to 31 Mar 2027", published with a GVP reproduction notice, retrieved 10 September 2026. Other industries run their own TV BZ agreements with different percentages – a client hiring for a different industry needs to check the agreement that actually applies, not the metal-and-electrical one.

What does this actually mean for the rate a client pays?

The assignment rate (sometimes called the bill rate) is what the client pays the staffing agency per hour – it sits above the tariff wage because the agency has to cover payroll overhead, administration and margin from it. When the tariff wage rises through pay grade or industry supplement, the bill rate usually rises too, typically through an adjustment clause written into the supply contract.

A worked example with disclosed assumptions: assume a payroll-overhead factor of 1.25 (employer social-security contributions, statutory accident insurance, holiday and public-holiday equalisation – a common industry rule of thumb, not a tariff figure) and a 20 percent margin. For a skilled worker on pay grade 4 in metal and electrical, that gives:

• Without an industry supplement (base rate €18.09): a calculated bill rate of roughly €27.14/hour.
• From day one with a 15 percent supplement (€20.80): roughly €31.20/hour.
• From month seven with a 45 percent supplement (€26.23): roughly €39.35/hour.

The supplement staircase alone pushes the calculated bill rate for the same person doing the same job up by more than 45 percent over the course of one assignment – with nothing about the work changing. That is worth checking against the pass-through clause in your own contract before an assignment runs for months.

How does tariff binding connect to equal pay?

Section 8(1) of the AÜG sets out the basic equal-treatment principle: "The lender is obliged to grant the temporary worker, for the duration of the assignment to the hirer, the essential working conditions applicable in the hirer's establishment to a comparable employee of the hirer, including pay" (source: gesetze-im-internet.de, § 8 AÜG, retrieved 10 September 2026). A collective agreement such as the DGB/GVP agreement may deviate from this – via the tariff opening clause in § 8(4) AÜG: without restriction for the first nine months, and after that only with a stepped approach toward the equal-pay level, reaching it by month 15 at the latest.

For a client, that means: as long as the staffing agency it hires is tariff-bound, it does not necessarily pay the same as the client's own permanent staff in the early months of an assignment. The exact calculation of when equal pay applies, and how it differs from the industry supplement, is covered in our piece on equal pay in temp staffing. This section only situates the legal position and is not legal advice.

What should a company check before hiring a staffing agency?

• Is the agency bound by the DGB/GVP collective agreement, or does a transitional rule under the old iGZ terms still apply (limited until 30 June 2027)?
• Does a TV BZ industry supplement apply to your industry, and from which day of the assignment does the first step kick in?
• Does the supply contract specify how and when tariff increases are passed through to the bill rate?
• How is the agency's own cost structure built up – more on that in our piece on staffing pricing models.

Frequently asked questions about the iGZ collective agreement

Does the iGZ collective agreement still exist?

Not as an independent agreement. iGZ merged with BAP into the Gesamtverband der Personaldienstleister (GVP) on 1 December 2023, and since 1 January 2026 a single DGB/GVP collective agreement has applied in place of the former separate iGZ and BAP agreements. The iGZ name mainly survives as a search term.

How many pay grades does the agreement have?

Nine, from grade 1 (simple helper work) to grade 9 (work requiring a university degree and management responsibility). The current agreement also adds an automatic seniority premium of 1.5 percent after nine months and 3.0 percent after twelve months with the same employer, regardless of pay grade.

What is the difference between a pay grade and an industry supplement?

The pay grade depends on qualification and task and applies regardless of industry. The industry supplement is added on top whenever the assignment takes place in an industry with its own TV BZ agreement, such as metal and electrical, and rises in steps with how long the assignment runs at the same client site – independent of the worker's pay grade.

Does a client need to check which agreement applies?

Legally, that responsibility sits with the staffing agency, but it still hits the client's costs directly: tariff binding, pay grade and industry supplement together shape how the bill rate develops over the course of an assignment. It's worth reading the adjustment clause in the supply contract before signing.

Does the bill rate change automatically during a running assignment?

The industry supplement rises automatically with assignment duration wherever a TV BZ agreement applies, regardless of what either party wants. Whether and how quickly that change reaches the bill rate is set entirely by the supply contract between client and agency, not by the collective agreement itself.

Does the agreement also cover direct placement?

No. The DGB/GVP collective agreement only governs employment relationships in temporary staffing (Arbeitnehmerüberlassung). Direct placement into a permanent role creates no temp-work relationship, so neither pay grade nor industry supplement applies – pay is set solely by the employment contract with the hiring company.