Strikes on trains, buses and airports: calm over Easter – economy

First of all, there is some good news just in time for the busy Easter weekend. Millions of people can travel by train in peace, they don’t have to fear that the train drivers and train attendants will go on strike after the GDL union and Deutsche Bahn agreed to a collective agreement this week. There will be no more industrial disputes at the railway this year; They will only be possible again from April 2025, when the next Easter is just around the corner.

Even at the airports that were recently plagued by strikes, there is calm for now, albeit for a shorter period of time. The Verdi union has reached an agreement in principle with Lufthansa, which concerns the salaries of around 25,000 ground service employees – such as technicians and the staff at the check-in counters. The breakthrough came in an arbitration led by the Thuringian Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (Left) and the former head of the Federal Employment Agency, Frank-Jürgen Weise. This averted a scenario that could have been very unpleasant for many travelers: If the arbitration failed, Verdi had threatened an indefinite strike.

Two conflicts at the airports remain acute

Peace will last at German airports at least until after the holidays. This follows recent developments in two other collective bargaining disputes in the aviation, which also have the potential to attract the ire of many passengers. On the one hand, there is the cabin crew of Lufthansa and the regional subsidiary Lufthansa Cityline. There are 19,000 flight attendants in total; the UFO union is demanding 15 percent more wages for them. at the beginning of March The flight attendants stopped working at the airports in Frankfurt and Munich for a day each. UFO justified the strike because there was no other means left because the management was unreasonable.

But talks are now underway again and both sides have met several times. It looks like you’re making progress. “We won’t ruin Easter for anyone,” says Harry Jaeger, head of collective bargaining policy at UFO, to the SZ. “Instead, we will resume talks immediately after the holidays and strive for a solution at the negotiating table.”

The second major and still acute wage conflict at the airports concerns the staff who carry out security checks. The total of around 25,000 employees are employed by various private companies; the Verdi union is negotiating for them all together. Bavaria is an exception: the security inspectors at Munich Airport, for example, are covered by the public service collective agreement and are not affected by the current negotiations.

Buses and subways could soon come to a standstill again

In this round, Verdi wants to implement an hourly wage that is 2.80 euros higher, and there should also be more money for overtime. After several warning strikes The union has now agreed on arbitration with the Association of Aviation Security Companies, which is negotiating on behalf of the employers. It begins next Friday, April 5th, under the leadership of the former Bremen Finance State Councilor Henning Lühr (SPD), who has experience with such matters: Lühr already arbitrated in the public service at the federal and local levelswhen nothing went wrong in the negotiations in spring 2023. The arbitration is scheduled to last until Sunday, April 7th; Verdi has committed itself not to call on security inspectors to go on strike again until then.

That leaves local public transport, which has also been frequently affected by strikes recently – around the end of January, when buses, trams and subways were at a standstill in many cities. Verdi had terminated collective agreements in local transport in almost all federal states; The union is currently trying to achieve higher wages and shorter working hours in several regional rounds. This concerns the working conditions of a total of around 90,000 employees.

Depending on the federal state, the negotiations are going very differently – in some regions, for example, the new agreement has already been reached and passengers there no longer have to worry about strikes. According to Verdi, this applies to Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Thuringia and Hamburg. Discussions are continuing in other federal states, such as Bremen and Lower Saxony.

And then there are the countries where the negotiations are quite deadlocked. In Baden-Württemberg, Saxony-Anhalt and North Rhine-Westphalia, for example, Verdi has called on employees to take a strike vote – if the outcome is positive, which is considered very likely, then there may be a risk of indefinite strikes in local transport. There are also signs of strikes in Saxony. The Easter peace, this much seems clear, will not last everywhere.