Long-distance traffic will be shut down for 50 hours

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Train passengers should expect huge restrictions for two days from Sunday evening: the Railway and Transport Association (EVG) has called for a nationwide strike, which should start at 10 p.m. on Sunday and end at midnight on Wednesday night. Deutsche Bahn criticized the 50-hour strike as “insane, completely unreasonable and completely exaggerated” and called on the EVG to negotiate.

The EVG’s current rate round with the train and about 50 other carriers has been running for weeks. Workers were not called to strike in all companies on Sunday, with some companies already making “significant progress”, but not at the largest employer, the railways, the union said. The biggest problem is the minimum wage.

“The patience of the employees has now really run out,” says EVG collective bargaining negotiator Cosima Ingenschay. “We have been forced to strike for 50 hours to show how serious the situation is,” she continued. The trade union is therefore mainly concerned with the condition of achieving a statutory minimum wage as the basis for subsequent wage increases.

The EVG also demands at least 650 euros more money for the employees as a social component. The EVG rejected the offers from the railways – including ten percent more wages and inflation compensation – as insufficient. She accuses the railways of linking the minimum wage of €12, now pledged in the table, to “renewed restrictions”, for example “minimum wages customary in the industry”, which would effectively result in a cap of €13. euros for lower incomes.

The train stopped it. “It is by no means the case that we offered a ceiling of 13 euros,” says HR manager Martin Seiler. If there is a “misunderstanding” at this point, he will gladly clarify it in person.

The railroads want to avoid the strike if possible — the company is “now ready” for talks even over the weekend, Seiler said. “It must not fail because of us.” However, the union needs to get moving for this. The next regular negotiations with the railways are not scheduled until May 23 and 24.

Should it actually come to the “longest warning strike in DB history”, the effects would be “significant”, according to the HR manager. It is conceivable that long-distance rural traffic will have to be shut down for the entire two days. “Significant effects on pan-European freight traffic” should also be expected, the railway company said. According to this report, six out of ten European freight corridors use the German rail network.

Affected travelers agreed to extensive goodwill arrangements. The company also wants to provide information about the consequences of the strike as quickly and completely as possible.

The companies in Berlin and Brandenburg sharply criticized the strike because it “disproportionately affected the capital region with its more than 300,000 commuters”. Negotiations are also well advanced and the railways have “already come a long way to comply with the EVG”, according to the UVB association. The union is apparently “just the member league in the forefront”.

(AFP)

Source: Blick