The German Locomotive Drivers Union is calling on its members to go on a 20-hour warning strike on the railway starting Wednesday evening. The employees should stop work from 10 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Thursday, as the GDL announced on its website on Tuesday. It had previously become known that the union’s decisive committees had made a fundamental decision to strike. Deutsche Bahn reacted angrily to the strike plans – the next round of negotiations was actually supposed to begin on Thursday.
The representatives of the GDL and the DB met last Thursday for the first round of negotiations for a new collective agreement and after a few hours they postponed further discussions to Thursday, November 16th. “This is an unreasonable burden for rail passengers. This strike is completely unnecessary,” said DB Human Resources Director Martin Seiler, according to a statement on Tuesday evening. The train drivers’ union ignores agreements and acts irresponsibly.
In collective bargaining, the union is demanding, among other things, 555 euros more per month for employees as well as an inflation compensation bonus of up to 3,000 euros. The sticking point is already the demand for a reduction in working hours from 38 to 35 hours for shift workers with full wage compensation.
The GDL chairman Claus Weselsky had indicated a willingness to compromise at this point in the past few days, for example suggesting a reduction in steps. However, the railway believes that a reduction in working hours is fundamentally not feasible. DB Human Resources Director Seiler, for his part, offered an 11 percent pay increase for a period of 32 months at the start of negotiations last week.
The GDL call for industrial action is aimed not only at employees of Deutsche Bahn, but also at those of other companies where the union is currently negotiating new collective agreements. “The GDL is calling on locomotive drivers, train attendants, workshop employees and dispatchers in all companies as well as dispatchers and other professional groups at DB Netz to go on strike,” the statement said.
The GDL is the smaller of two unions at the railway. She represents many train drivers, but also negotiates for other professional groups, such as train attendants or parts of the administration. The railway has so far applied the GDL collective agreements in 18 of around 300 companies and emphasizes that only around 10,000 railway employees are affected by the collective bargaining that has now begun. For comparison: The railway and transport union EVG negotiated new collective agreements for a good 180,000 DB employees in the spring and summer.
The potential for major disruption to rail traffic is still great in GDL industrial disputes – precisely because many of the extremely important train drivers are members. In addition, the GDL is also explicitly calling on those union members to strike who do not work in the 18 companies where pay is made according to GDL collective agreements.
