The specter of the citizens who are used to mobility was just going around again in Germany: The railway went on strike, again. After the major strikes in 2007 and 2015, the most recent collective bargaining round between Deutsche Bahn and the Union of German Locomotive Drivers (GDL) has also escalated. After three waves of strikes, an agreement was surprisingly found. But the conflict on the railways is of a structural nature. Because despite the agreement with the GDL, further strikes on the railways were by no means ruled out. The rival trade union EVG (Railway and Transport Union) wanted to make use of its special right of termination and renegotiate: EVG boss Klaus-Dieter Hommel emphasized the ability of his union to strike and threatened: “The collective bargaining round is over when it comes to an end with the EVG . ” This is how it happened: Last week, the railways and EVG reached a tariff agreement.
Peter Imbusch is Professor of Political Sociology at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal.
(Photo: oh)
The GDL strike and the fundamental conflict at the railways make two things clear: On the one hand, collective bargaining conflicts escalate not most when it comes to money, but when it comes to the big picture and fundamental issues: jobs, the collective bargaining system or union status . On the other hand, the risks of conflict escalation accumulate and multiply when trade unions in a corporation compete for power, members, influence and better collective bargaining agreements.
Joris Steg is a research assistant at the Chair of Political Sociology at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal.
(Photo: oh)
Wage conflicts, labor disputes and strikes have a long tradition. Since the industrial revolution, strikes as a means of enforcing interests – just like their counterparts on the corporate side, such as lockouts – have been inseparable from the history of capitalism and the relationship between capital and labor. But not all conflicts are created equal, and not all strikes are created equal. Conflicts have very different causes, triggers and backgrounds.
The most recent wage dispute between the railway and the GDL was more than an ordinary wage round, it was a special conflict that has reached an extraordinary level of escalation and has features of a “wilderness of the social conflict” (Axel Honneth). For this reason alone, this conflict is very different from current collective bargaining. However, this is only one side of the coin. On the other hand, the logic and structure of the labor dispute follow common patterns of conflict escalation in collective bargaining disputes.
In an empirical study, the authors of this article examined the collective bargaining disputes and strikes at Lufthansa between 2000 and 2019. Different conflicts were systematized according to their causes, backgrounds and subject areas in order to transfer them into a conflict typology according to the escalation level. It has been shown that the duration and intensity of a collective bargaining conflict largely depend on the subject of the conflict and the type of conflict.
Conflicts about money are easier to resolve than those about power
The history of conflicts at Lufthansa shows that pure wage conflicts, i.e. conflicts over quantifiable material issues such as the level of wages, generally do not harbor any particular potential for escalation and can usually be settled relatively peacefully. In the typology, conflicts of this kind were viewed as consensual or as controversial but regulated conflicts. With recourse to the conflict-theoretical categories of Albert O. Hirschman, these types of pay conflict can be described as divisible conflicts with a “more or less” character.
On the other hand, collective bargaining disputes escalate mainly, dealing with qualitative issues such as jobs and working conditions, the recognition or status of a (branch) union as an autonomous collective bargaining party, or basic collective bargaining structures and the rights to be able to conclude collective agreements for employees. These types of conflict were defined as a basic or elementary conflict as well as a status or recognition conflict. According to Hirschman’s distinction, these are indivisible conflicts that follow an “either-or” logic, which makes compromises and understanding more difficult.
In this respect, the renewed escalation between the railway and the GDL was a conflict with an announcement. Because this conflict was also about material issues such as the percentage of wage increases and a corona bonus. If these quantitative-material questions had been the only contentious issues, however, the conflict would quickly have been resolved by consensus. However, this conflict was not primarily about money. The focus was on qualitative questions: It was about the status of the GDL as a collective bargaining party and the question for which part of the workforce the union can negotiate collective agreements.
The GDL feared losing its status
The conflict was also and precisely determined by the relationship with the EVG, the larger rail union, and was shaped by the wrangling over the role, power and influence of the GDL in the rail company. All of this must be seen against the background of the law on collective bargaining, which was introduced in 2015 after a strike by the GDL – therefore also known as Lex GDL – and provides that if there are several collective agreements in a company, the collective agreement of the union with most of the members is valid in the case of the railway, it is usually the EVG and not the GDL.
The GDL saw its power and position in the group as well as its basic status as a collective bargaining party in danger. Because this was about fundamental issues, since from the GDL’s point of view, its status and future as a union were at stake, the GDL was not very willing to compromise and was very willing to strike. If the railway had not given in on the question of who the GDL can conclude collective agreements for, no agreement would have been reached, but there would have been more GDL strikes.
Despite the agreement, the structural conflict at Deutsche Bahn has not been resolved. Because the GDL prevailed against the railway and also achieved a higher degree than the EVG, the larger railway union is now under enormous pressure and the next conflict seems to be inevitable. In any case, the signals are unmistakable. It is more than likely that this industrial action at the railroad was by no means the last, but only the preliminary stage to the next battle.