Note from Deutsche Bahn on the warning strike by the railway and transport union EVG on Friday.
Photo: IMAGO / Jan Huebner
“We’ve been waiting for eight weeks and so far we haven’t received anything that is negotiable,” said Cosima Ingenschay last Wednesday into the microphones set up in front of her, audibly impatient. The deputy chairwoman of the railway and transport union EVG has just announced warning strikes for Friday from 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. In comparison to the “monster strike” of March 27, when EVG and Verdi jointly struck down long-distance, freight, air, local and shipping traffic nationwide, one might think harmless. On the other hand: If the railway workers stop working, then everything very quickly comes to a standstill in long-distance and freight traffic, even if it is only for a few hours. Sociologists call it circulation power.
Two days after the press conference, Ingenschay is standing on a stool at Berlin’s Ostbahnhof. She is surrounded by workers who are walking down work today to put pressure on the second round of negotiations, which is due to start on Tuesday. The sun is shining. A sign is leaning against the stool from which she speaks to the others: “Today is not a working day, today is a strike day.” statutory minimum wage and only meet this through a subsidy; a short term of twelve months, because “we can see how dynamic the situation is”, twelve percent wage increase. And certainly the most important requirement: at least 650 euros more per month for everyone.
For everyone means: Not only for the 180,000 employees at the various Deutsche Bahn companies, but also for 50,000 other colleagues at rail and railway companies. Because: This time, the EVG is negotiating for all of these almost 50 companies at the same time. With this, the union wants to counteract the fragmentation of its collective agreement and to unify the standards by synchronizing the collective bargaining rounds. For the warning strike on Friday, therefore, not only employees of Deutsche Bahn were called. Two companies in the Transdev Group had tried to stop the strike with an injunction. But without success: A labor court in Frankfurt am Main declared it permissible on Thursday evening.
According to EVG Chairman Martin Burkert, more than 23,000 railway workers nationwide took part in the walkout. After the »monster strike«, it was the second work stoppage by the EVG in the ongoing collective bargaining dispute that began in February. So far, they have only been offered an unacceptable 27 months and a wage increase of five percent, and the central fixed-term deposit requirement was initially not addressed at all, says the EVG. Instead, a one-time payment of 2500 euros was proposed. “We didn’t ask for that at all and the employer knows exactly that the colleagues don’t want such a payment because it’s not sustainable and in the end it just fizzles out,” says negotiator Kristian Loroch.
After the arbitration commission set up in the collective bargaining dispute in the public sector had presented a arbitration proposal for the collective agreement in the public sector on April 15, the rail employer side immediately spoke up and demanded that a conclusion be reached based on this arbitration – the EVG rejects that off.
To understand this show of determination, it is important to remember that the union must not only provide its members with an effective anti-inflationary deal, but also one that mitigates the effects of the restraint exercised during the coronavirus pandemic. In 2020 and 2021 there were de facto zero rounds at the railway.
After the postal service and the public service, the collective bargaining round with the EVG is already the third major collective bargaining dispute in the area of services of general interest and infrastructure this year. But it won’t be the last: Not only will the second large collective agreement in the public sector, the collective agreement of the federal states, expire in autumn, but also the collective wage agreement with the German train drivers’ union (GDL), which, as is well known, has similarly high demands high willingness to strike and conflict. But before it’s the GDL’s turn, the EVG will probably immerse itself further in the labor dispute: A sudden conclusion, as at the post office, cannot be ruled out, precisely because the EVG had often routinely demonstrated the union co-management in the past. At the same time, their demands and the employers’ ideas are far apart at the moment.
On Wednesday, in front of the cameras, Cosima Ingenschay emphasized that getting together when there was nothing to talk about was “tariff folklore.” Shortly after the end of the first round of talks at the end of February, she declared that she couldn’t afford it. Also because of EVG’s efforts to synchronize: “We are negotiating with 50 companies at the same time, a negotiation cycle lasts four to six weeks – that drags on,” says the 44-year-old. So you simply have no time for conversations without a basis.