After the cancellation of the planned two-day warning strike, the railway parties are trying to find common ground again. The EVG union and the group are meeting on Wednesday at a secret location. This fuels hopes of progress in the dispute over wage increases that has been smoldering for months and in which train services have been paralyzed twice for many hours. However, new strikes remain possible.
“Negotiations must now be conducted constructively,” demanded EVG negotiator Kristian Loroch. “The trickery of the employer must finally come to an end.” The official negotiations, which will take place in Fulda in about a week, are to be prepared in the new talks.
Deutsche Bahn had tried to prevent the warning strike planned for Monday and Tuesday before the labor court. That ended in a comparison at the weekend. The EVG canceled the strike. The railways agreed to meet minimum wage demands.
“Deutsche Bahn made an unequivocal declaration to the labor court that it would meet our minimum wage requirements,” explained EVG negotiator Loroch. “Against this background, we can now enter into negotiations – as long as the employer keeps his word. Otherwise, we are able to call for a strike again at any time. And that too from Wednesday.”
The union is demanding twelve percent more wages for 230,000 employees at Deutsche Bahn and other train companies, in particular because of high inflation. According to its current offer, Deutsche Bahn is offering ten percent more wages plus an inflation premium for medium and low earners, spread over a good two years.
“There has never been a situation like this before.”
After some delays on Sunday, there was not much left of the planned 50-hour warning strike on Monday. Long-distance and regional traffic on Monday ran largely smoothly. “We had already started to reduce the train traffic and then had to start it up again,” said a railway spokesman. “There has never been a situation like this before.” There were no longer any restrictions in regional traffic on Monday. According to the railways, almost all trains were on the move in long-distance traffic. This Tuesday it should also be 100 percent in long-distance traffic.
At some regional railway companies, the union stuck to the call for strikes. This included the company Transdev, which operates the Bavarian Oberlandbahn and the Bavarian Regionalbahn, among other things. Abellio Central Germany, which operates trains in Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt in particular, was also affected by the warning strike. At the North German Railway Company, the Northwest Railway and the Westphalia Railway, the EVG also remained involved in industrial action. With the exception of Bavaria, where there were still major restrictions on passengers on the regional and Oberlandbahn and on the Meridian, the effects on the railway competition were limited, according to an assessment by the competitor association Mofair.