Workers at Bachwehr Systems GmbH in Wels began an open-ended strike on Monday after weekend talks failed over pay and staffing. The stoppage has halted production at the Upper Austrian company, which says it has 18,400 flood-barrier units awaiting shipment to retailers and building suppliers.
At the gate, Aranka Halász, 58, stood with a thermos and a handwritten list of colleagues’ shift demands. For 27 years she has worked the plant’s cutting and assembly lines; she is now the strike’s most visible organiser. The twist, confirmed in Austria’s public patent register, is that Halász is also named as an inventor of Bachwehr’s bestselling barrier.
The worker behind the design
Halász says she sketched the barrier’s locking joint during a late shift in 2018, after watching colleagues struggle to fit an earlier model around uneven shop entrances. The joint lets two lightweight panels hold together without drilling into a building. Bachwehr’s product catalogue credits the design team but does not name her.
The register lists Halász and a company engineer as co-inventors. Her employment contract assigned commercial rights to Bachwehr, she said, and she receives no royalty. “I’m proud that the barrier works. I’m angry that the people who make it are being told to do more for less,” she said.
I helped make the thing that keeps other people’s shops dry; now my own voice is being treated as a cost.
Aranka Halász, machinist and strike organiser
Halász says she never expected a personal payment and has not challenged the contract. She joined the strike after management proposed cutting a €110 monthly shift premium (about US$128) and raising the number of panels each assembly team must finish per shift. The works council’s tally shows 128 of 146 employees backed the action.
Orders climb, talks stall
The company links its backlog to a rush of orders after severe-thunderstorm alerts across Upper Austria this summer. Bachwehr says its sales rose 38% in the first nine months of 2026 and that customers want deliveries before next spring’s wet-weather season. It has not said how much of the backlog is already overdue.
Pablo Barragán, Bachwehr’s operations director, said the shift premium was introduced as a temporary measure during a difficult supply period and the proposed production target was “achievable with better scheduling”. He said the company had offered a smaller pay rise and would resume talks if the strike ended, but would not restore the premium in full.
Sona Lachman-Baria, a Vienna-based labour economist, said the dispute puts a growing export business in a bind: delay orders and risk losing buyers, or settle on terms that could raise costs across future contracts. A two-day stoppage would be manageable, she said; an extended one could leave distributors short when retailers begin stocking seasonal protection.
Halász plans to return to the gate for Tuesday’s morning shift change, carrying the same list of demands. The workers want the premium retained, two additional hires on the assembly line and a written cap on daily output. Bachwehr says its next meeting offer stands, but no date has been agreed.
