2024-08-29 00:52:27
As GDL boss, Claus Weselsky led many rail strikes and also got to know several transport ministers. In the process, he formed clear opinions.
Shortly before his retirement, GDL boss Claus Weselsky is taking a stand against the German transport ministers of the past and present. The chairman of the train drivers’ union said in an interview with the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” (“SZ”): “In Germany we have a combination of incompetent railway executives and transport ministers who are not interested in the railways, but only in cars.”
Specifically, he thinks that Andreas Scheuer (CSU), who served as transport minister under Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2018 to 2021, was “the worst.” But the current transport minister, Volker Wissing (FDP), also doesn’t come off well with Weselsky. “Volker Wissing has so far mainly achieved that the subsidiary DB Netz is now called ‘Infrago’ and is also responsible for train stations. Great.”
Weselsky does not want to become active in politics in his retirement, even though he is a CDU member. “That is out of the question for me. As a professional politician, you need a backbone like a garden hose.” He does not plan to “start out as a cashier in the local association” and “work his way up to the local association chairman over 20 years.”
Mario Reiß is to be Weselsky’s successor at the GDL. The election will take place at the union’s general meeting from September 2nd to 5th in Dresden. Weselsky explains that Reiß is currently barely speaking in the press by saying that the union must “speak with one voice” and that there have been interviews in which attempts have been made to drive a wedge between Weselsky and Reiß. “Then I said: Mario, you are not doing any more interviews until you are elected,” Weselsky said in the “SZ”.