No breakthrough until evening
Bahn and EVG are stuck in a marathon of negotiations
6/16/2023, 7:44 p.m
The negotiations between the railways and the EVG union are about the core: How high is the wage increase and how long does the new collective agreement run? If no agreement is reached, a warning strike could follow.
In the collective bargaining dispute at Deutsche Bahn, a solution was negotiated for hours for the fifth day in a row. In the early evening it is still unclear how and when the marathon of negotiations that has been going on since Monday could end. This also left open whether the passengers might face another warning strike. Representatives of the group and the railway and transport union EVG did not comment on the current state of affairs. Both sides had given themselves until Friday for this round of negotiations. An extension of the talks to Saturday or Sunday also seems possible.
In the end, it should be about the pay increases and the term of the collective agreement – that is, the core of the negotiations. In an interim report on Wednesday, the union emphasized that there was a lot of potential for conflict. The EVG has so far largely paralyzed rail traffic twice in the collective bargaining round with warning strikes. A planned 50-hour strike in May was canceled at short notice after a legal dispute at the labor court in Frankfurt am Main.
What the EVG demands and the DB offers
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 is an inflation compensation premium in several payments totaling 2850 euros, which is tax and duty-free.
According to both sides, the negotiations were intensive and constructive until Wednesday. However, it is conceivable that on Friday the EVG will threaten or immediately call for a warning strike because of the excessive differences in terms of duration and fee increase. In this way, the union could try to persuade the employers to make a better offer. Depending on the duration of the labor dispute, the railways should definitely take such an action. During the two warning strikes in March and April, not only long-distance traffic came to a standstill, freight traffic also came to a virtual standstill – which is associated with high costs.
Should the EVG even declare the negotiations to have failed, a strike vote could then follow for an indefinite period. However, that would mean a significant escalation of the conflict. Alternatively, both sides could agree on an extension of the current round or look for a new date in the next few days – possibly with a cancellation of work stoppages until such a date.