It is an escalation with an announcement: After it briefly looked on Friday as if Deutsche Bahn and the German Locomotive Drivers’ Union (GDL) could get closer to each other, the GDL has now called for a strike again. It is scheduled to begin in passenger traffic at two o’clock on Tuesday morning and last until two o’clock in the morning on Wednesday. Freight transport will also be on strike for 24 hours, but from Monday evening.
Claus Weselsky thus carries out his threat and a strike occurs that was not announced 48 hours in advance. The GDL boss announced this at a press conference last Monday and spoke of “wave strikes” that would follow. Normally a union announces a strike 48 hours in advance so that the company on strike can prepare for it and – as in the case of the railway – can draw up an emergency timetable. The train now only has 30 hours left to do this.
Deutsche Bahn had actually invited the GDL to collective bargaining talks on Monday. However, the GDL made its participation in further negotiations dependent on whether the railway would receive an improved offer by 6 p.m. on Sunday. However, the railway refused to submit such an offer and allowed the deadline to pass. “We are convinced that we will only be able to reach an agreement through dialogue at the negotiating table,” said DB Human Resources Director Martin Seiler.
He is of the opinion that in this phase of the negotiations it is “not productive” to “transition into a written exchange of offers and answers”. Instead, the railway would like to reach a compromise in personal negotiations, based on a paper drawn up by the moderators in the collective bargaining dispute, the former Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière and Schleswig-Holstein’s Prime Minister Daniel Günther (both CDU); This also includes a 36-hour week with full salary compensation. The GDL demands one hour less working time per week for shift workers, namely 35 hours.
Weselsky already had it on Friday the procedure proposed by the railway was rejected. The GDL has “no new and improved offer that would justify withdrawing from industrial action and re-entering negotiations.” The wording “to conclude the negotiations based on the moderators’ overall proposal of February 26, 2024” alone is not a new offer. Weselsky accuses the railway of “unnecessarily or even deliberately” exacerbating the conflict. However, the GDL will not allow itself to be provoked. She will forego the industrial action measures that have already been announced as long as the railway submits an offer by Sunday evening. That didn’t happen.