Standstill: On Monday and Tuesday, a new warning strike threatens the railways
Source: dpa-tmn/Jens Büttner
Deutsche Bahn customers will have to prepare for a warning strike again from Sunday evening. While the group’s management emphasizes that it has met demands in the wage dispute, the EVG trade union rejects this. But channels of communication are still open.
IIn the collective bargaining dispute with the railway and transport union (EVG), Deutsche Bahn says it is willing to make concessions. “In intensive talks until late Thursday evening,” the EVG was promised to comply with the request made months ago for the statutory minimum wage to be shown, the railway said around midnight.
“We have a requirement minimum wage fulfilled, now the EVG has its word,” says DB HR Director Martin Seiler. “The EVG must now keep its promise and cancel the 50-hour warning strike.”
EVG negotiator Kristian Loroch told the German Press Agency that it was a “bogus offer” by Deutsche Bahn. “In the end, after lengthy discussions, the employer put a solution option on the table that was worth discussing for us. After we started discussing these, he then backed down.”
The EVG had the DB after the Warning strike announcement called for talks on Thursday, as Loroch explained on Friday night. According to the current status, the warning strike will take place. However, the union had given the railways an ultimatum to approach them “and to think things over” during the course of Friday.
Bitter dispute over the minimum wage
The railway and transport union had called on workers on Thursday to go on strike, which should last from 10 p.m. Sunday evening to midnight on Tuesday evening. The railways decided a little later to completely stop long-distance traffic during this period. “Even at DB Regio, there will be no trains running during the strike,” the state-owned group said.
The minimum wage, which around 2,000 employees at DB only receive through allowances, has recently been the subject of particularly vehement arguments. The EVG had already called for a walkout twice in the ongoing collective bargaining dispute – these actions were also followed by the cessation of long-distance transport and an almost complete standstill in regional transport.
The union represents employees from almost all areas of the railways and has called on all professional groups to go on warning strikes. Accordingly, the effects are directly severe. If, for example, the dispatchers go on warning strike, all traffic on certain sections of the route comes to a standstill.
The chairman of the Union of German Locomotive Drivers (GDL), Claus Weselsky, considers it unnecessary for Deutsche Bahn to stop long-distance traffic for 50 hours because of the EVG warning strike. “The EVG is not so well organized at the network subsidiary DB Netz that Deutsche Bahn would be forced to stop rail traffic,” Weselsky told the news portal “The Pioneer”.
“With a certain effort, Deutsche Bahn could maintain network operations and many ICE trains could continue to run.” Weselsky said the board was acting irresponsibly and without ambition.