After months of negotiations, an arbitration should settle the tariff conflict between the railways and the EVG. But whether that succeeds depends not least on someone who is not even sitting at the negotiating table.
It is usually considered a bad sign when neutral arbitration occurs in a wage round. Because then employers and unions have not found any solutions because they can’t get along – a bad omen for the negotiations over the next few years. Things are different in the five-month collective bargaining round at Deutsche Bahn: train passengers can be happy if the arbitration that began on Monday somehow succeeds. The quite realistic alternative is the longest rail strike in decades.