2023-06-22 18:44:12
On Thursday, Deutsche Bahn didn’t even have the choice between plague and cholera, it has to deal with both: for a short time, an approaching storm disrupts train traffic in Germany, soon it will be the EVG railway workers’ union, which is unloved by the railways. She’s gearing up for an indefinite strike in the middle of the summer vacation season. There has not been a strike of this magnitude in Germany for more than 30 years.
It will probably take four to five weeks for the necessary ballot to be completed among the 110,000 members. If 75 percent of those surveyed agree, the preparations for the strike can begin. Summer vacation lasts until September. It is therefore quite possible that millions of holidaymakers will be affected, also because the EVG does not want to rule out warning strikes during the ballot.
It hadn’t looked bad in the past week: the parties to the collective agreement negotiated for a total of six days, “intensively and constructively”, according to both sides. The result is a collective agreement of an impressive 140 pages with a number of sub-items and structural changes in the wage structure of the railway company with its more than 200,000 employees.
DB HR Director Martin Seiler thought he had finally reached his goal after more than four months of confrontational and – in the truest sense of the word entertaining – bargaining rounds. “We were close,” is the frustrated statement from the state-owned company, which is currently struggling with many construction sites, both actually and figuratively: there are more than 1000 a year on the overloaded rail network, and there is also an upcoming general renovation with a number of full closures , a corporate restructuring and chronic money worries. It would have been nice to have at least reached an expensive but fair collective bargaining agreement with the employees.
Orientation towards private railways
But “just before” does not mean that you have arrived at the finish line. Anyone who has to wait seemingly endlessly before the last bend just before Frankfurt’s main train station knows that, for the track to be free. This conclusion was not good enough for the EVG collective bargaining commission and the federal executive board. In the eyes of the trade unionists, the offered term of 27 months is too long, and the wage increase of a total of 400 euros per month, divided into two steps starting in December, is too measly and too late. In addition, Deutsche Bahn had offered a tax-free inflation compensation premium of almost 3,000 euros, also to be paid out in two steps.
With some private railways, above all the railway company Transdev, the EVG has already reached its goal: 420 euros a month for all employees plus an inflation compensation premium for a term of 21 months. For employees, this means increases of between 9 and 18 percent.
EVG believes that this is also a benchmark for Deutsche Bahn, although the world of state-owned companies is completely different: the Deutsche Bahn employee structure is much larger and more complex. Even the earlier Deutsche Bahn offers totaled 1.3 billion euros a year. The further negotiating room for personnel manager Seiler is small, at the same time the permanent shortage of personnel strengthens the negotiating position of the trade union: If the railway wants to recruit new staff, they have to put up a lot more, she argues.
A comment by Heike Göbel Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 74 Published/Updated: Recommendations: 46 Corinna Budras Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 16
The employer side sharply criticized the escalation on Thursday and made it clear what the failure of the collective bargaining meant from their point of view: “Everything that has been achieved so far in the negotiations is now gone,” Seiler clarified. A result will be postponed for months by the ballot. For employees, this means that the inflation compensation premium offered will also be delayed.
This means that not only holidaymakers could be spoiled by the rail strike, as Seiler puts it, but also employees. The rail manager had always emphasized that the employees were waiting for this tax-free subsidy – especially with a view to the summer holidays. To be on the safe side, he added: “It’s not up to DB, it’s still ready to find a solution.”
And what about arbitration?
EVG is also willing to negotiate. If there is a new offer from Deutsche Bahn, you will of course take a look at it. The EVG chairman Martin Burkert said that the possibility of arbitration would not be closed either. A moderated discussion with constructive impulses could give the negotiations momentum again, after all, a Frankfurt labor judge prevented the EVG from the last big warning strike at Deutsche Bahn – but at the time she also threatened to prohibit the strike, which the EVG is therefore targeting the private railways had to restrict.
After the warning shot from the judges’ bench, the parties to the collective bargaining agreement began to negotiate properly for the first time. However, EVG negotiator Kristian Loroch has now turned the tables: The 50-hour warning strike has at least led to the desired deals with the private railways.
Arbitration had recently brought about a breakthrough in the public sector, where the collective bargaining agreement was reached months ago. Since then, Deutsche Bahn has looked enviously at the outcome of this wage dispute. In its previous offers, Deutsche Bahn has always been based on this – also with the argument that, as a state-owned company with a mountain of debt of more than 30 billion euros, it would be difficult to top the collective agreement for the public sector.
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