By Gunnar Schupelius
The drivers work under bad conditions with bad pay. Nevertheless, the federal government is not lifting a finger to improve the situation in this vital sector, says Gunnar Schupelius.
Everyone is talking about the warning strikes by Verdi and the EVG railway union. All eyes are on the collective bargaining rounds in the public sector and at Deutsche Bahn.
Other industries remain unnoticed in the background, whose employees are also struggling with difficulties and may even have more reason to demand better working conditions.
This includes, for example, freight transport on the road. For the second time in three months, the Bundestag dealt with the catastrophic situation of truck drivers – especially in long-distance transport – at the end of March. Again it came out that the lack of drivers is a growing problem, the offspring are not coming.
According to the industry, there is already a shortage of up to 80,000 truck drivers in Germany. The Federal Association of Road Haulage Logistics and Disposal e. V. (BGL) gives three reasons for this: the poor pay, the poor image of the profession and poor working conditions.
There are too few resting places on the freeways, the hygienic conditions are poor, showers and toilets are too expensive. The pay is below the tariffs in the public sector, the working hours are not family friendly.
BGL board spokesman Dirk Engelhardt said that the lack of drivers can no longer be compensated for by personnel from Eastern Europe because they also exist there.
Long-distance drivers are particularly angry at the Greens in the federal government. In mid-March, they blocked a coalition motion by the SPD and FDP to improve the infrastructure in long-distance truck transport.
For ideological reasons, the Greens reject any help for road freight transport and only want to promote rail. In doing so, they ignore the fact that the majority of consumer goods cannot be transported in any other way than by truck.
To make matters worse, the federal government is levying a CO2 tax on freight forwarders. This will increase the truck toll by up to 40 percent from 2024. This intensifies the need to save. The CO2 tax is supposed to favor “alternative drives”. The red-green-yellow policy ignores the fact that there is no affordable alternative to diesel engines for heavy trucks.
This has even been recognized in the European Parliament. There, trucks were expressly exempted from the “combustion ban” that is to apply in the EU from 2035.
The freight forwarders feel completely ridiculed because the revenue from the CO2 tax for trucks is not to be used for the expansion of roads, parking lots or truck stops, but for the railways. And that despite the fact that, according to the latest forecasts by the federal government, road freight traffic will increase by 54 percent over the next 30 years. In particular, growing online trade makes more and more trucks necessary.
An industry as important as road haulage is being punished by politics through disregard. If anyone in this country has a reason to go on strike, it’s the long-distance drivers.
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