Dhe planned 50-hour warning strike on the railways has surprisingly been called off. The Deutsche Bahn and the railway and transport union (EVG) agreed to a settlement before the labor court in Frankfurt am Main, as both sides and the court announced on Saturday. “Against this background, we have suspended the strike at DB AG for the time being,” said the EVG. Hessischer Rundfunk had previously reported on the agreement.
The warning strike would have led to a two-day standstill in long-distance traffic on Monday and Tuesday, and hardly a train would have been able to run in regional and freight traffic either.
Bahn warns of restrictions
Despite the cancellation of the strike, the railways warned of restrictions in the train service in the next few days. “DB is facing the great challenge of rescheduling around 50,000 train journeys and the associated shift and deployment plans,” it said. The state-owned group wants to provide information about the exact timetable from Sunday afternoon.
The EVG emphasized that the call for strikes still applies to some railway companies. Only the labor dispute at Deutsche Bahn was canceled. Since the end of February, the EVG has also been negotiating new wage agreements with around 50 of Deutsche Bahn’s competitors. From the union’s point of view, talks with most of these companies are not progressing significantly. With these mostly regionally active railways, there is still a risk of failures.
The warning strike announced on Thursday morning brought plenty of movement into the talks between EVG and DB. Deutsche Bahn tried aggressively to prevent the walkout. However, an attempt to negotiate failed on Thursday evening, and on Friday afternoon an ultimatum from the EVG for a new offer from DB expired.
Deutsche Bahn rates the planned strike as “disproportionate”
In the next step, the group moved in front of that labor court in Frankfurt am Main and filed an urgent application to avert the warning strike with an injunction to cease and desist. DB rated the planned walkout as “disproportionate”, it harmed customers and “uninvolved third parties”. The court debated for almost four hours on Saturday before both sides agreed to the settlement.
“The way Deutsche Bahn went to the labor court was worth it for everyone,” said DB HR Director Martin Seiler, according to the announcement. With the settlement, both sides also agreed, according to DB, “to negotiate quickly and constructively, with the goal of an early conclusion”.
A sticking point in the ongoing collective bargaining conflict is the issue minimum wage, which, according to both sides, also took up a lot of space in court. Around 2,000 employees currently only receive the statutory minimum wage of 12 euros through allowances. The EVG has made it a prerequisite for all further negotiations that this minimum wage is first included in the tariff tables. She wants to ensure that these 12 euros per hour form the basis for all further negotiation results.
Initially, Deutsche Bahn did not want to meet any preconditions before the actual negotiations. In the meantime, however, she has agreed to include the minimum wage in the tariff tables in advance. Most recently, there was still a dispute as to whether future negotiation results should also be written one-to-one for the lowest wage groups in the tables or paid out differently, for example in the form of bonuses. At this point, Deutsche Bahn argues that the usual industry wages, for example for security and cleaning staff, would be far exceeded. The EVG therefore stuck to its warning strike plans – at least until the court hearing on Saturday.
The current bargaining round affects 230,000 employees, 180,000 of whom work for Deutsche Bahn. The dispute over the minimum wage affects just one percent of the people for whom negotiations are taking place overall. For the union, however, this point is crucial – they want to strengthen employees with low wages disproportionately with a view to inflation. In addition, the aim should also be to gain new members in these wage groups or these sectors through their commitment.
The fact that the lower wage groups are to be strengthened disproportionately is also shown by the main demand made of the industry, which focuses on a high fixed amount: the union wants to achieve 650 euros more per month for employees at the 50 railway companies, only at the She asks for percentages on top incomes, specifically 12 percent. According to the union, the term should be 12 months.
Deutsche Bahn has recently promised tax- and duty-free one-off payments totaling 2850 euros and gradual increases of 10 percent for the lower and middle income groups and 8 percent for the upper income groups – all of this over a period of 27 months.