Monday, August 09, 2021
The “heater” warms up
GDL boss Weselsky is preparing for a rail strike
He used to be a train driver, today he’s just a driver: Claus Weselsky is currently causing the board members of Deutsche Bahn sleepless nights. A rail strike in the middle of the summer travel season is inconvenient for the state company. But the GDL boss has a lot of practice with the uncompromising attitude.
He left the driver’s cab on the train a long time ago. And yet Claus Weselsky, as head of the Union of German Locomotive Drivers (GDL), can still bring trains across the country to a standstill. He leaves no doubt that he is ready to strike even in the current wage dispute with Deutsche Bahn. Headwind against him personally is anything but alien to the 62-year-old.
Weselsky is a trade unionist through and through. Born in Dresden, he was already there when the GDL was born in East Germany and in 1990 became chairman of the Pirna branch. Two years later, the trained train driver leaves the rails: from his office he works for the GDL as a staff and works council, and from 2002 onwards he has been completely released from his trade union activities. In May 2006, Weselsky was promoted to vice-chairman of the GDL and became “Crown Prince” of the then boss Manfred Schell.
Weselsky became known in 2007 when Schell said goodbye to the cure at Lake Constance in the middle of the hot phase of the labor dispute. At that time, Weselsky showed that as a negotiator he uncompromisingly represents the position of the train driver. From the point of view of the GDL, the result, which was fought for after months of fighting at the beginning of 2008, is impressive: a hefty wage increase of eleven percent. A few months later, the members of the Weselsky train drivers’ union elect Schell’s successor, with 90 percent of the vote.
“As if he were calling out holy war”
Weselsky, who has been a member of the CDU for years, is also fighting hard in the following collective bargaining rounds. In 2015, it brought Deutsche Bahn the longest strike in the company’s history to date. During the conflict, Weselsky attacked the company sharply, accusing the company of a “bad game” and a “smear comedy”. In the past, his rumblings have occasionally led Weselsky to call for his resignation – his negotiating style is controversial even in trade union circles. “He poses as if he were calling for holy war. Just to strengthen his ego,” his predecessor Schell grumbled once.
It is by no means unknown to him that Weselsky is not only making friends with his pithy choice of words or with the announcement of massive strikes, especially during the holiday season, in the current wage conflict. He was repeatedly portrayed in public as a riot maker and was also referred to as the “bogeyman of the nation” or “Einheizer”, the “Bild-Zeitung” called him at the end of 2014 a “great trainer”.
Elbows in competition with the EVG
Weselsky emphasizes that he wants to fight above all for the railway workers. These had kept the track running during the Corona crisis and are now tired of being “fobbed off with zero and minus rounds,” he says. He admits that “every time we strike the railway system is a bad time” – “above all for the railway system itself”. And yet Weselsky leaves little doubt that he means business. According to Personnel Director Martin Seiler, Deutsche Bahn also expects a “further escalation”.
For Weselsky, it is also about the importance of the GDL itself: the branch union is in competition with the larger railway and transport union (EVG), the train driver union fears that its influence in the group could become smaller under the collective bargaining law. The railway therefore accuses Weselsky of trying to enforce “selfish power interests” in the current wage conflict.
Weselsky can, however, rely on the backing of the GDL members. “We expect over 90 percent approval of the strike,” he says. “Now a labor dispute is called for if the railway board does not present an improved offer.”
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