(new: urgent application from the railway)
BERLIN (dpa-AFX) – The train drivers’ union GDL is calling for the first multi-day strike in the current collective bargaining dispute with Deutsche Bahn and other companies from the middle of the week. In passenger transport, the strike should begin on Wednesday morning at 2 a.m. and last until Friday evening at 6 p.m., as the GDL announced on Sunday. In freight transport, the GDL members should stop work on Tuesday evening at 6 p.m. The railway criticized the approach and announced legal action.
With the strike, the GDL is reporting back after the “Christmas truce”. The union had ruled out industrial action over the Christmas period and the New Year up to and including Sunday. Now follows the third and longest strike in the ongoing dispute. “The DB Group did not use the Christmas peace to counteract industrial action with a negotiable offer,” criticized the GDL.
The union has so far brought large parts of rail traffic in Germany to a standstill twice with warning strikes. After the members approved the strike vote in December, the GDL can now call for longer strikes.
The railway announced that it would take legal action against the planned action. A corresponding urgent application for an interim injunction will be submitted to the Frankfurt Labor Court. “This strike is not only absolutely unnecessary, but we also consider it not legally permissible,” said Human Resources Director Martin Seiler, according to the statement.
Seiler said that just two days ago the railway presented an expanded offer in which the company took a big step towards meeting the union’s core demand for working hours. “The DB is ready to compromise. It is now time to negotiate again. The GDL leadership has overreached, they must finally come to their senses.”
Fronts hardened
The fronts in the collective bargaining conflict have hardened. The GDL declared the negotiations with the railways and with the competitor Transdev to have failed in November. The crux of the matter is the GDL’s demand for a reduction in weekly working hours for shift workers from 38 to 35 hours with full pay.
With its new offer, the railway took up the reduced working hours for the first time. However, Seiler refuses to pay employees the same wages.
Instead, Deutsche Bahn suggests expanding existing choice models for working hours. Up to now, employees can decide whether they want more money, more vacation or fewer working days per week. You could reduce your weekly hours from 39 to 37, but you would receive 5.7 percent less pay. The railway now offers the possibility of reducing weekly working hours in this mode to 35 hours. If you want, you could also work up to 40 hours a week for a little more money. Anyone who decides to work shorter hours will have to compromise on a collectively agreed wage increase, emphasized Seiler.
“How alien and distant from the employer does the HR director have to be to offer a part-time model that is financed by the employee himself?” criticized GDL boss Claus Weselsky.
The fact that the railway recently filed a lawsuit against the GDL in the state labor court in Hesse is unlikely to have helped to defuse the situation – even if it only marginally deals with the specific collective bargaining issues. Rather, the railway wants to take action against the Fairtrain cooperative, which the GDL founded in the summer.
According to Weselsky, the aim of the rental company is to poach train drivers from the railway and to loan them out to railway companies under their own tariff conditions. The railway sees this as a conflict of interest and questions the collective bargaining ability of the GDL, which from the company’s perspective now acts as both an employer and a union. Seiler reiterated on Sunday that the GDL had lost its ability to negotiate collective agreements by founding its cooperative./maa/DP/he