Traffic with trains, buses and planes in Germany largely came to a standstill on Monday. A major warning strike by the EVG railway union and Verdi has been going on since midnight. Millions of commuters and travelers as well as large parts of freight transport are affected by the 24-hour industrial dispute. Larger traffic jams in addition to the usual obstructions in rush-hour traffic were only occasionally reported by the police in the morning. There was talk of slow traffic, but without major restrictions as a result of the major strike.
The ADAC reported significantly more traffic and obstructions on the motorways, but there was no chaos in the morning. Traffic is stalling around the metropolitan areas, “but we don’t see a collapse or huge chaos,” said a spokeswoman. From their point of view, the early announcement and the reporting may have ensured that many people would have prepared for the warning strike: “Those who can have stayed in the home office.”
On the rail, long-distance traffic is complete on Monday and regional traffic is initially mostly stopped. Almost all German airports are on strike. Waterways and ports as well as the motorway company are also affected. Public transport is also on strike in seven federal states.
With the all-day warning strikes, the Verdi union and the railway and transport union (EVG) want to increase the pressure in their collective bargaining. Parallel to the strike, trade unions and employers in the public sector will meet again this Monday for talks. At the EVG, further negotiations with Deutsche Bahn and other railway companies will take place later.
Verdi boss Frank Werneke emphasized: “The strike day in the transport sector should once again make it unmistakably clear to employers that the employees clearly support our demands.” The President of the Association of Municipal Employers’ Associations, Karin Welge, criticized the fact that the collective bargaining partners had already agreed last year to come together in three rounds of negotiations. “That’s why the massiveness of the strikes before the third round of negotiations is clearly astonishing,” Welge said on radio station Bayern 2. At the moment, she’s assuming that an agreement will be reached. The head of the civil servants’ association dbb, Ulrich Silberbach, warned against an expansion of the labor disputes. Deutsche Bahn spoke of an “exaggerated strike”. The winners of the day are the mineral oil companies.
The EVG strikes the long-distance, regional and S-Bahn traffic. Long-distance traffic has been discontinued, regional traffic for the most part, at least since the start of the strike. According to Deutsche Bahn, whether individual lines will be included in regional traffic in the afternoon depends on the course of the strike. Effects should also be felt on Tuesday. Private railways that were not on strike were also affected because employees in the DB Netz signal boxes went on strike.
According to the airport association ADV, 380,000 business and private travelers have to stay on the ground. There was no regular passenger service at the largest airport in Frankfurt; around 1,170 take-offs and landings with around 160,000 passengers were originally planned for Monday. In Munich, 785 flights should be canceled. At Cologne/Bonn Airport, Verdi said: “Everything is sealed here.” At least three quarters of take-offs and landings should be canceled there. According to the plan, flights were also canceled in Düsseldorf. In Hamburg, all 147 planned departures were canceled or took off without passengers. A much slimmed-down flight plan was online for Hanover. No planes should take off in Bremen at all. The capital’s airport BER was not included in the warning strike. But since almost all other airports are on strike, all domestic German flights have been cancelled. All domestic German flights have also been canceled in Leipzig/Halle and Dresden.
Local transport is again on strike in the federal states that are directly linked to the collective agreement for the public sector. These are Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony. There is also a strike in Bavaria, where a collective agreement for local transport is being negotiated.
