After the all-day warning strike three weeks ago, the next work stoppage in rail transport is imminent with train cancellations and delays. At Deutsche Bahn and other railway companies, further warning strikes are planned throughout Germany this Friday.
As reported yesterday from trade union circles in Berlin, a nationwide strike is being called for Friday morning and Friday morning. The railway and transport union EVG wants today (8.30 a.m.) to provide details on how it wants to increase the pressure on employers in the wage dispute with Deutsche Bahn and 50 other railway companies. In long-distance traffic, even a half-day warning strike would very likely lead to a complete standstill, because otherwise many trains would not be at the right place the following day.
What the union demands
In the short term, more pressure must be exerted on those employers “who still think they can ignore the demands of the employees,” the invitation said. “Some employers are still refusing to respond to the central demands decided by the collective bargaining committees of the EVG, others are submitting offers that are far from what we are asking for.”
The EVG demands at least 650 euros more per month for a term of one year or twelve percent more for the upper income groups. The union is currently negotiating in the second round with around 50 railway companies. Today the union meets with the company Transdev. The next round with Deutsche Bahn is scheduled for the coming week. At the group, the collective bargaining affects a good 180,000 employees.
What the train offers
Deutsche Bahn (DB) was recently open to adopting the arbitration proposal in the negotiations for the public sector as a basis for its own talks. This initially provides for tax and duty-free special payments of 3000 euros in several stages.
From March 2024 there will then be a base amount of 200 euros and then a wage increase of 5.5 percent. If no increase of 340 euros is achieved, the relevant increase amount should be set to this sum. The EVG assessed DB’s initiative as a provocation on the part of the employers.
How the negotiations have gone so far
The atmosphere between EVG and DB is tense, the negotiations have been quite confrontational so far. They started in Fulda at the end of February. Since DB HR Director Martin Seiler did not submit an offer from the employer at this meeting, the union ended the talks after around two hours.
DB submitted an offer for the second round in mid-March, but the union saw no basis for entering into negotiations. Accordingly, these negotiations also ended prematurely.
A big warning strike followed at the end of March, for which the EVG and the Verdi services union called for work stoppages in local, regional and long-distance transport as well as at the airports. The warning strike completely paralyzed long-distance rail transport, and hardly any trains ran for hours in local and regional transport. There was no chaos on the freeways, for example – because many commuters probably worked from home.
