In Germany, the largest transport strike in the last three decades is underway: trains, planes, buses are at a standstill. Millions of people were left without transportation.
Unions are demanding wage increases due to inflation. There is a new round of negotiations between unions and employers who say that the strike is disproportionate. Trade unions warn of a possible strike for Easter.
Germany is paralyzed, in big cities at the busiest stations it is quiet, like during the quarantine. Millions of passengers and freight traffic were blocked. The railway stopped, local public transport, all airports, except in Berlin – flights were suspended, and waterways and ports were also blocked. Many worked from home, but not all.
‘I’m stuck here in Frankfurt. I was supposed to fly to Johannesburg. I gave up on the trip. I’m coming home,” says one of the passengers.
”It is, as it is. It takes me much longer to get there now. There is no help there.” says one woman.
The unions are demanding a salary increase of more than 10 percent and better working conditions for almost three million employees in the public sector and transport. The employers do not make an acceptable offer, they offer a five percent increase and a one-time payment of 2,500 euros. They warn that higher wages in transport would cause prices and taxes to rise.
The strike had been known for several weeks, so everyone had prepared quite well. Public opinion polls show that the majority of the German population supports this way of union struggle, as well as union demands, taking into account the dramatic jump in housing, food and energy prices over the past year.
Unions warn that the pressure on workers and their living standards is increasing. Consumer prices rose more than expected, by as much as 9.3 percent, despite the efforts of the European Central Bank to stop that jump by raising interest rates.
Frank Werneke, head of the Verdi union, says this is a matter of survival for millions of workers.
“There is an enormous increase in the price of electricity, gas and food. Workers are tired of nice words, while working conditions are getting worse,” says Verneke.
German Interior Minister Nancy Feser says that the unions have been given a good offer and that she expects them to reduce their high demands a bit.
The day-long union strikes have the support of 55 percent of Germans, and are the latest in months of protests that have hit major European economies.
“All of this certainly has consequences for Europe as well, but what we can already count on is that practically in the last twenty years, Germany has been in a phase of relatively good economic development and growth in the purchasing power of the population until the covid epidemic and the war in Ukraine. moment there is a drop in the purchasing power of people who live from their work, and in this last period inflation has been increasing in the last year and it amounts to 8.7 percent, and of course then there are these strikes that are characteristic of the end of last year and the beginning of this year, where German unions want to protect workers from inflation,” explains Slobodan Zečević from the Institute for European Studies.
(RTS)