The 50-hour rail strike was averted at almost the last minute. According to SZ information, Deutsche Bahn and the EVG railway union agreed to a settlement before the Frankfurt labor court. There, the railway had submitted an urgent application to stop the warning strike.
The railway had argued that the 50-hour warning strike was disproportionate. The court does not follow this reasoning. But the Frankfurt judges managed to persuade both sides, who had been fighting bitterly for months to get higher salaries for railway employees, to come to a compromise.
The comparison states that both sides should now continue to negotiate quickly and constructively. There is also an approximation to the minimum wage recipients on the railways. The topic had previously been particularly controversial and a major reason why it had not progressed in the collective bargaining round. The EVG had demanded that those earning the minimum wage, such as cleaning staff and security personnel, benefit fully from the salary increase that is being negotiated in the current collective bargaining round.
Despite the cancellation of the strike, according to the railways, restrictions on train traffic are to be expected. The group announced that around 50,000 train journeys that would have been canceled due to the strike would have to be rescheduled, as well as the associated shift and deployment plans. In addition, the timetable data would have to be entered back into the information systems. “It’s a real feat,” said the railway. You will be informed about the exact timetable from Sunday afternoon.
It is also uncertain how long the truce between the disputing parties will last. The railways have stated unequivocally in court that they “meet our demands for the minimum wage,” says the EVG. You must now quickly confirm this in talks with binding effect. “If the employer breaks his word, we will call for a strike again.” The Frankfurt Labor Court made it clear that this was possible and permissible. For other, much smaller train companies, where negotiations have stalled, the strike call continues to apply. The EVG did not say what these are.
The EVG originally wanted to bring rail traffic to a standstill from 10 p.m. on Sunday evening until midnight on Tuesday evening, just like at the end of March and the end of April for a few hours. The planned 50-hour strike would have led to far more train cancellations and delays. The background is the bitter wage dispute, in which hardly anything has happened for months.
The EVG is demanding twelve percent more wages for 230,000 employees at Deutsche Bahn and other train companies. There should be at least 650 euros more per month, so that employees with lower salaries would particularly benefit. The railways recently offered ten percent more wages for medium and low earners plus almost 3,000 euros in inflation premiums, spread over the 27-month term of the collective agreement.
Deutsche Bahn describes this as the historically highest offer it has ever made. It roughly corresponds to the wage settlements that the major trade unions IG Metall and Verdi negotiated for the almost four million metalworkers and the 2.5 million public sector employees. The EVG still classifies it as “no basis” for a wage deal.