GERMANY's powerful IG Metall union vowed to bring havoc to the country's engineering sectors with lightning strike action after tough wage negotiations with employers collapsed.

Union leaders warned that hundreds of thousands of workers would disrupt work today to protest at plans to push through cuts in sick pay, set out in new government legislation.

The issue of sick a roved the main obstacle in the talks, as the two sides disagreed over employers' plans to cut payments to 80 per cent of the full wage during the first six weeks of absence. IG Metall, which has three mil lion members, refused to budge from its position that the employers Gesamtmetall should continue to pay workers full wages when they have to take time off for illness. Both sides blamed the other for their intransigence in the talks.

The union noted that the protests would coincide with the 40th anniversary of the country's longest post war strike when workers won the right to full sick pay. Union president Mr Klaus Zwickel pledged that all Germany's, engineering and electrical engineering industries would be hit.

The collapse of the negotiations yesterday was seen as sign along renewed social unrest. Union leaders said they had been asked to give away too much, but Mr Werner Stumpfe, head of the Gesamtmetall management federation, countered that all of its proposals had been "swept off the table".

Under the law which went into effect on October 1st, employers have the right to reduce sick pay from 100 to 80 per cent of gross wages during the first six weeks of illness provided it does not contravene existing salary agreements.

This provision, which is the most controversial part of a programme by the Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, to reduce state spending and reform welfare, undoes an agreement reached in 1956 following a six week strike.