The EVG union has expressed concern about the current situation at the DB Cargo freight railway. “There is no overall strategy on how to run this company economically, how to get more goods on the rails,” said EVG deputy chairwoman Cosima Ingenschay. A comprehensive transformation is currently being worked on. Ingenschay, who is deputy chairwoman of the supervisory board at DB Cargo, criticized the fact that employee representatives were not sufficiently involved.
DB Cargo has been in the red for years. In 2022, the railway put the loss in its annual report at 665 million euros (adjusted EBIT). In 2021 it was minus 467 million euros. According to consistent media reports, the company again generated a loss of around half a billion euros in 2023. The exact business figures are to be published in March.
EVG fears job cuts
As part of the transformation, combined transport should be outsourced to DB Cargo subsidiaries, said Ingenschay about the transformation plans. The EVG sees this as an attack on employee participation. It is currently unclear how many positions will be created at the subsidiaries and how they should be filled. According to Ingenschay, 1,600 to 1,800 jobs could be lost at DB Cargo itself. “We will defend ourselves against this with all our might. Change is needed. This can only happen with the employees and not at their expense.”
Railway: “irresponsible scaremongering”
A spokesman for Deutsche Bahn rejected EVG’s presentation as “irresponsible scaremongering”. There are no job cuts, but rather internal relocations within DB. A concept was discussed with the employee representatives. “Unfortunately, there was no common denominator,” said the spokesman on Saturday in Berlin.
The aim of the entire board is to position DB Cargo AG so that it can compete, have a positive future and thus remain an attractive and secure employer. Change is necessary for competitiveness. Economic results are crucial for this. It cannot be in the company’s interest or in the interest of the employee representatives for the European Commission to decide what the future of DB Cargo looks like.
The goal: more goods by rail
Freight transport by rail is divided into three areas: single wagon transport, combined transport and block train transport. Single wagon transport in particular is considered an expensive and hardly lucrative business because many wagons with different goods have to be combined and taken to different destinations. Combined transport, in which containers are picked up at a port and then transported by rail, has recently been seen as a growth business.
Shifting freight transport to rail is important, not least in the fight against climate change. The traffic light coalition has set the goal in the coalition agreement that a quarter of freight transport will be carried by rail by 2030. In 2022 this value was 19.8 percent. 71.3 percent of freight traffic was carried on roads.
