transport union
Negotiation marathon at Deutsche Bahn continues
The EVG has so far largely paralyzed rail traffic twice in the collective bargaining round with warning strikes. photo
© Andreas Arnold/dpa
In the wage negotiations at the railways, the EVG transport union has been struggling for months to get significantly more money for the employees. The concern about warning strikes creates uncertainty among passengers.
Further negotiations are pending in the collective bargaining dispute at Deutsche Bahn – but an exact timetable is not yet known. On Friday, the representatives of DB and the railway and transport union EVG were unable to reach a conclusion for the fifth day of negotiations in a row. They adjourned further talks to the following week. The EVG first wants to inform its decision-making bodies about the status of the negotiations. Exact dates for these internal consultations and the next round of negotiations were not initially announced.
“We negotiated intensively and reached an agreement on many issues,” said DB HR Director Martin Seiler. EVG collective bargaining board member Kristian Loroch said: “We have worked out numerous compromise lines in the past few days and now want to discuss them in detail with the responsible decision-making bodies.”
Points of contention: above all pay increases and contract duration
The EVG wants to achieve a fixed salary increase of at least 650 euros per month or twelve percent more for the upper wage groups for a good 180,000 employees at Deutsche Bahn (DB). According to their ideas, the term should be twelve months.
Deutsche Bahn had recently promised twelve percent more in several stages for the lower wage groups over a period of 24 months. The middle groups should get a total of ten percent more and the upper groups eight percent. The first stage of the increase should therefore be due this year. In addition, there would be an inflation compensation premium in several payments totaling 2850 euros, which is tax and duty-free.
Both sides have also brought other structural issues into the negotiations. The big sticking points are likely to have been the pay increases and the term of the collective agreement.
So far two warning strikes since the end of February
The EVG has so far largely paralyzed rail traffic twice in the collective bargaining round with warning strikes. Thousands of workers walked 24 hours a day in March and 8 hours in April. A planned 50-hour strike in May was canceled at short notice after a legal dispute at the labor court in Frankfurt am Main.
Should there be another warning strike, this should already be in the holiday season. On Thursday, June 22nd, North Rhine-Westphalia, the largest federal state, will start the summer holidays.