analysis
The GDL wants to put the DB group under pressure with a temporary work agency: A union subsidiary is supposed to lend engine drivers to railway companies. A bold plan with no guarantee of success.
While there have recently been cautious hopes that the EVG union and Deutsche Bahn could come to an agreement in their next round of negotiations, the next collective bargaining conflict in the industry is already on the horizon. Yesterday, the significantly smaller engine driver’s union GDL presented its demands for the upcoming collective bargaining with the DB Group in autumn.
However, GDL’s extremely unusual plan of wanting to hire out engine drivers to the railways in the future caused a stir. To this end, she has already founded the “Fair Train eG” cooperative, which in the medium term is intended to hire engine drivers on better terms and then hire them out to railway companies. “In the future, the railway workers will gradually take their destiny into their own hands,” said GDL boss Claus Weselsky.
Only GDL members can purchase shares in the “Fair Train eG”. With this “pioneering idea for the railway market”, the union would indirectly become an employer itself. That was a “challenge” to Deutsche Bahn, according to Weselsky.
First placements already in December?
Weselsky justified the plan primarily with the fact that railway jobs must be made more attractive in view of the shortage of personnel and skilled workers. “The aim of the cooperative is to provide technically qualified locomotive drivers and to allow the resulting profits to flow to the cooperative members themselves, instead of watching the DB AG board members fill their pockets,” says the GDL.
If things go according to the plans of the union, the cooperative should become operational very quickly. “We assume that we will have placed the first colleagues in the market by the timetable change in December 2023,” said a GDL spokesman.
First of all, however, the procedure for applying for the so-called temporary worker permit is still ongoing. Then the cooperative would have to close the collective agreements with the GDL. “Then we will address the colleagues who, in addition to acquiring shares in the cooperative, have expressed their interest in working for Fair Train eG,” said the spokesman. “These are then given to interested railway companies in their region of residence.”
Critical size matters
Whether the bold plan will work remains completely open. The decisive factor for the success of the model will be whether the new cooperative succeeds in recruiting enough train drivers of its own. They would have to give up their relatively secure jobs at DB and other railways and be willing to take the risk of a new business model.
Last but not least, the model of temporary work is based on the fact that employers often pay lower wages to the employees they “leave” than to their permanent workforce – and they can use them flexibly. The Federal Labor Court recently confirmed the lower pay in principle, provided there is a collective agreement with the temporary employment agency.
Talks of a “campaign”: GDL boss Claus Weselsky.
For the GDL, however, it is hardly conceivable that the employees would be hired out below the wage level of the cooperative, which per se should already be higher than that of the railways: “Since we also have to operate profitably as a cooperative and of course we have to adhere to the wage agreements that we have yet to conclude and conclude have to hold, a leasing under such conditions is excluded,” said the union spokesman.
The railways, on the other hand, will endeavor not to pay more for temporary workers than for their permanent staff. The question of how much negotiating power the cooperative can unite is therefore all the more important for the success of the model. The union plan could benefit from the fact that qualified train drivers are rare. By being in direct competition with the DB Group as an employer, GDL is putting additional pressure on the company.
GDL the smaller of two competitors
Of the two railway unions, the GDL is the significantly smaller one. It has almost 40,000 members, the competing EVG around 185,000 members. Only in a few railway companies, but especially in the private railway companies, are most union members organized in the GDL.
The Collective Bargaining Act provides the following regulation: If there are several collective agreements for the same group of employees in a company, the agreement of the union with the most members in a company will be applied. Therefore, the EVG is the stronger employee representation at Deutsche Bahn, while the GDL is at private railways.
At Deutsche Bahn, a good 180,000 employees are currently paid according to the EVG collective agreement, the GDL contracts are used in slightly less than 20 of the 71 railway companies with a good 8,000 employees. As a smaller union, the GDL seeks to gain profile and membership through usually higher demands and a more confrontational tone.