Overall, the EVG is negotiating for 180,000 employees at DB and another 50,000 at other railway companies.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin The railway and transport union EVG is sticking to its planned 50-hour warning strike on the rails from Sunday evening. The union announced on Friday. This means that employees are still called upon to stop working from Sunday evening 10 p.m. to Tuesday evening 12 p.m. and thus paralyze rail operations. The DB had already announced on Thursday that in the event of a strike, all long-distance traffic would be stopped for this period, and almost all regional trains are also expected to be canceled.
The railway had initially tried to avert the warning strike in talks with the EVG until late Thursday evening. EVG negotiator Kristian Loroch spoke on Friday night of “bogus offers” from the employer. The central point of discussion is currently the statutory minimum wage, which around 2000 employees at DB only receive in the form of allowances.
All professional groups at the railways are called to the warning strike – including the employees at the signal boxes who coordinate all rail traffic on the German rail network. As a result, the warning strike has a very large impact – it is foreseeable that it will also affect railway companies that are not involved in the wage conflict. Freight traffic is also likely to come to a standstill.
EVG negotiates for 180,000 railway employees
From the point of view of Deutsche Bahn (DB), there is no longer any reason for the warning strike. “In intensive talks until late Thursday evening,” the EVG was promised to comply with the request made months ago for the statutory minimum wage to be shown, the group announced around midnight. “We have met the minimum wage requirement, now the EVG has its say,” emphasized DB HR Director Martin Seiler.
The EVG wants to include the statutory minimum wage of 12 euros in the tariff tables so that all further negotiation results can then be calculated based on this value. Deutsche Bahn has now agreed to this, but only wants to clarify later in the negotiations whether all collective bargaining results will also be included in the tables for these employees or whether they will be paid in the form of allowances. The railways argue that they otherwise pay far more than the wages customary in the industry, for example for security or cleaning staff.
Overall, the EVG is negotiating for 180,000 employees at DB. At the same time, talks are being held with around 50 other rail companies about new collective agreements, which will involve another 50,000 employees. Almost all of these companies are directly struck, only in a few cases does the union see progress in the negotiations.
The goods competitors asked Deutsche Bahn to organize an emergency operation. “The companies that are not in a collective bargaining conflict must not be harmed either intentionally or negligently,” says a letter from the network of European railways to the railway infrastructure division DB Netz.
According to the GDL union, a total failure is not mandatory
In view of a two-day warning strike on the rails, however, it is not to be expected that the German economy will be brought to its knees, according to the freight railway association. There are branches of industry that make time-critical calculations, such as the car or mineral oil industry. But even there the warning strike does not last long enough for serious effects.
The chairman of the Union of German Locomotive Drivers (GDL), Claus Weselsky, considers it unnecessary for the railways to stop long-distance traffic for 50 hours. “The EVG is not so well organized at the network subsidiary DB Netz that Deutsche Bahn would be forced to stop rail traffic,” Weselsky told the news portal “The Pioneer” (Friday). A Bahn spokesman described Weselsky’s allegations as “absurd”. “The EVG simply has much greater leverage when signal boxes are on strike,” said the spokesman.
The smaller GDL competes with the EVG in the Bahn group for members and influence. Weselsky said: “I am sure that there will be no conclusion before we have drawn up our demands.” The GDL negotiates new collective agreements for the train drivers organized by it and the train crew from late summer. On June 5, the GDL wants to officially announce their demands.
More: Deutsche Bahn stops long-distance traffic completely for two days.