Vbefore such a situation stood the Deutsche Bahn Never before: On Friday, the group was forced to shut down all rail operations in Germany for the coming days due to the warning strike announced by the EVG railway workers’ union, but just 24 hours later the situation was completely different. Since Saturday afternoon around 4 p.m. the goal has been: back to normal operation.
Train cancellations inevitable
Thousands of employees first had to be removed from the shift plans and then laboriously summoned again. 50,000 long-distance and local train journeys alone as well as the associated shift and deployment schedules had to be rescheduled. “From the provision to the train journey itself to the maintenance check in the factory, many individual personnel plans are closely interlinked at the railways,” explained a railway spokesman on Sunday. This resulted in a whole cascade of new shift and train schedules. After all: This situation, which is unique for DB, is going to be much better than initially assumed. Nevertheless, restrictions for travelers could not be avoided.
In concrete terms, this means: On Sunday, 100 train journeys that were initially canceled could still be carried out, although individual train cancellations were unavoidable according to the group. Around two thirds of the planned trains will run on Monday. There will also be restrictions and cancellations in regional traffic, it said. Everything will only go back to normal on Tuesday. As with previous rail strikes, the railways are again focusing on the greatest possible flexibility – for customers and for themselves: the group announced that the train connection would be lifted for journeys between Sunday and Tuesday. Cancellations are also possible free of charge if the tickets have been booked by May 11th.
The reason for the unusual activity was a sensational intervention by the Frankfurt Labor Court on Saturday. Bahn lawyer Thomas Ubber from the commercial law firm Allen & Overy had applied around 9 a.m. to ban the 50-hour warning strike. From 12 p.m. the labor court heard. The presiding judge raised several concerns about the legality of the strike and suggested a settlement – which both parties then agreed to.
Minimum wage of 12 euros
A curious side effect is that since only Deutsche Bahn filed a lawsuit, only they benefited from the agreement. For several other train and bus companies, the strike call remains in place, the EVG members will go on strike there from Sunday evening. The union has also been negotiating new wage agreements with around 50 of Deutsche Bahn’s competitors since the end of February. It remains to be seen whether these strikes will still have the necessary clout after the abrupt change of course: In many of these companies, the EVG does not represent the majority of the employees.
A central component of the settlement is Deutsche Bahn’s concession to pay all employees a minimum wage of 12 euros from the first day of the validity of the collective bargaining agreement, specifically March 1, 2023. Around 2,500 employees have only been paid the statutory minimum wage through bonuses and not as a fixed part of the pay table. However, a second addition is important for the EVG: “Even the employees in the area close to the minimum wage will be fully included in the wage increase that has yet to be agreed,” says the comparison that is available to the FAZ. Deutsche Bahn and EVG must now negotiate exactly what the tariff increase will look like.
After three months of collective bargaining, which have so far passed without result, the two parties are now getting closer to the actual debate: how high the wage increase should be for the more than 180,000 EVG members. The EVG demands a basic amount of at least 650 euros per month for everyone. For the lower wage groups, this would mean a disproportionate increase that far exceeds the 12 percent otherwise required. So far, the railway has offered a 10 percent increase for the lower and middle wage groups, 8 percent for the upper and tax-free one-off payments of around 3000 euros – each in two steps. The EVG has so far rejected this as “not negotiable”.
In the past few days, the dispute over the minimum wage has taken up a lot of space – although it only affects around one percent of employees. After the strike was announced on Thursday, Bahn and EVG had unsuccessfully tried to clear up this point in a ten-hour conversation. At this point, Deutsche Bahn had already offered to increase the salary of the employees concerned to 12 euros and then to grant them the “full amount” of the later agreed wage increase. On Friday, the EVG rejected this proposal as a “sham offer”.
After the agreement reached before the Frankfurt labor court, the EVG is now insisting on speedy negotiations. The next round of negotiations is scheduled for May 23-24. However, EVG negotiator Kristian Loroch will offer Deutsche Bahn constructive talks as early as next Tuesday in preparation for the next round of negotiations.