I work at a unionised company, our union is called IG Metall. You can google the EG (entgelt) levels - engineers range from EG14-17 + an additional % each month (depending on your productivity range from 10-25% of brutto on top) + we get 14 salaries instead of 12 (roughly - union agreement). https://www.igmetall.de/download/docs_MuE_ERA_Entgelte_Juni2...

I always was confused when somebody told me exactly like you did. These levels are inconsistent across different lands. How much brutto is that practically? My calculations are 75-90k, but this is a huge spread :) Anyways thanks for the insight!