Truck drivers block the Gräfenhausen and Pfungstadt service areas

2023-07-24 18:25:33

Tense waiting: the drivers from Georgia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are demanding that the trucking company finally pays their wages. Image: Frank Röth

Truck drivers from a Polish forwarding company are once again blocking the service areas along the A5. There are around 80 vehicles in Gräfenhausen and Pfungstadt on Monday – more than during the first strike in spring.

The engine flap of the mighty Mercedes truck is open, and someone has stretched a clothesline underneath. This keeps the T-shirts clipped to the cord dry, even when it begins to drizzle from the gray sky over the Gräfenhausen service area. Two men are sitting on folding chairs between the trucks, peeling apples, and the scent of an egg omelet being fried in a pan over a gas stove emanates from a hold. But the supposed trucker idyll is deceptive: the drivers are in an existential emergency. After weeks and months of traveling through Europe separated from their families, they don’t want to come home empty-handed. They demand that the trucking company pay them what they say they are entitled to.

For a few days, the men, who mainly come from Georgia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, have been standing with their trucks on the A 5 in southern Hesse. It’s a sense of deja vu: back in April, long-distance drivers from the same Polish forwarding company set up camp at the Gräfenhausen-West service area to enforce their demands. Even then, the negotiating position was: truck for money. The trucking company should only get the heavy vehicles back if outstanding wage payments have been settled.