BERLIN (dpa-AFX) – In the collective bargaining conflict at Deutsche Bahn, further movement is becoming apparent after the complicated start of negotiations. Next Tuesday, representatives of the group and the EVG union in Berlin want to sit down again. As the German press agency learned from Bahn circles, the company wants to “submit an overall offer for income increases, including the minimum wage issue for the collective bargaining round,” in the second appointment. This emerges from a letter to the EVG that was available to the dpa. The EVG said it had agreed with Deutsche Bahn to start talks on Tuesday.
For the day, the EVG has also called on employees of Deutsche Bahn and other companies to a demonstration in Berlin, which is to be followed by talks from 4 p.m. The basic attitude of the union remains the same, said an EVG spokesman: They wanted to talk to the railways about the minimum wage first. The EVG informed the group that they would like to have the offer one day before the start of negotiations so that the tariff commission could evaluate it.
However, the Bahn letter said that “no prior handover of an offer” would take place against the background of the planned overall offer for income increases and the issue of minimum wages. In view of the extensive package with 57 demands of the EVG “with a volume of 25 percent and an annual cost effect of more than 2.5 billion euros, it is imperative to first discuss the content of the demands, positions and respective priorities in order to prioritize for to derive an overall collective bargaining agreement”. The company also warned: “It is certainly in our common interest to avoid another interruption without sufficient exchange of content, as in the first round of negotiations in Fulda.”
The first round of negotiations was interrupted after just two hours at the end of February. The EVG did not want to negotiate further without an offer from the employer. In the negotiations, the union is demanding at least 650 euros more wages for 180,000 employees, and they want to achieve an increase of twelve percent for the higher wages for a period of twelve months. In addition, she calls for some structural changes in the collective agreements. The railways had described the demands as clearly too high and the interruption in negotiations after only two hours in the first round as “completely unnecessary”./csc/DP/jha