Seven federal states affected: strikes paralyze local transport in many places

Status: 03/03/2023 09:30 a.m

The all-day public transport warning strikes began in the morning. In seven federal states, buses and trains are standing still in many places – from Stuttgart to Hanover. The situation at a glance.

Massive warning strikes in local public transport began early in the morning in several federal states. So far, impairments on buses and trains have been reported from seven federal states. Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg, Saxony, Lower Saxony, Bavaria and Rhineland-Palatinate are affected.

The service trade union Ver.di and the civil servants’ association dbb called for all-day warning strikes. In doing so, they want to underpin their demands in the current collective bargaining round for the public sector in the municipalities and the federal government. The focus of today’s warning strikes should be the Ruhr area and the Rhineland. The Deutsche Bahn with its S-Bahn and private transport companies are not affected.

In the various federal states and many cities, the sometimes massive effects of the warning strikes have been gradually appearing since the morning. An overview of the situation in the affected federal states.

Hesse

In Frankfurt, subways and trams have remained in the depots, said Thomas Heimbürger from the Ver.di trade union to the dpa news agency. All subways and trams there are expected to stand still for 24 hours without replacement. In Wiesbaden and Kassel, too, there were hardly any buses and trains at the start of operations.

North Rhine-Westphalia

In North Rhine-Westphalia ver.di expects at least 15,000 strikers nationwide. Residents of the larger cities in particular must be prepared for considerable restrictions. S-Bahn and regional trains are not affected by the warning strikes. According to ver.di NRW, warning strikes are planned in Dortmund, Bochum, Essen, Mülheim, Oberhausen, Cologne, Bonn, Aachen, Münster, Bielefeld, Hagen and Düsseldorf, among others.

Baden-Wuerttemberg

Numerous buses and trains are also at a standstill in several cities in Baden-Württemberg. Ver.di had announced walkouts in Stuttgart, Freiburg, Mannheim, Heilbronn, Ulm, Esslingen, Konstanz, Karlsruhe and Baden-Baden. In some of the affected cities, replacement buses are being used by private companies.

Saxony

In some Saxon cities, local transport workers also laid down their jobs. The public transport companies in Chemnitz and Zwickau were called on, for example.

Lower Saxony

The warning strikes in local transport and public service have started in large parts of Lower Saxony. “The buses and trams didn’t even go on the road or rail when they started operating,” said Detlef Ahting, head of the Ver.di district of Lower Saxony/Bremen. Smaller transport companies and public companies, for example in Hanover, Braunschweig, Bremen or Göttingen, are on strike. Regional and long-distance trains are not affected by the warning strike. In Lower Saxony there were already severe restrictions on local public transport on Thursday.

Bavaria

The Munich transport company also reported massive restrictions on buses for the second day in a row. The subway and tram were out of service, but the S-Bahn is running. The AVV in Augsburg reported that local transport in the city had almost come to a complete standstill. The transport association Greater Nuremberg (VGN) is affected in several cities, but not the regional train service and the S-Bahn. There are restrictions and failures in Nuremberg, Bamberg, Erlangen, Fürth and Regensburg, among others.

Rhineland-Palatinate

In Rhineland-Palatinate, for example, buses and trams remained in the depots in the state capital Mainz, as Marko Bärschneider from the Ver.di union said. The warning strike began when the individual companies started operating between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. Cities such as Kaiserslautern and Trier are also affected.

Fridays for Future is also on strike

The action is to take place together with the climate activists from Fridays for Future, who have called for protests for more climate protection today.

Many citizens have been feeling the effects of warning strikes in the public sector for weeks. In the negotiations for the approximately 2.5 million employees in the public sector at federal and local level, the union Ver.di and the civil servants’ association dbb are demanding 10.5 percent more salary in view of inflation, the energy crisis and a shortage of staff, but at least 500 euros more per month. A spokeswoman for ver.di emphasized that better pay should create more attractive jobs and counteract the shortage of skilled workers in the public sector so that employees do not leave the company tagesschau.de.

No agreement was reached in the second round of negotiations last week. The unions had rejected an offer from the employers as insufficient. The offer includes, among other things, a pay increase of five percent in two steps and one-off payments totaling 2,500 euros.

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