Labor dispute of the GDL: Labor court rejects injunction - train driver

The strike of the train drivers at Deutsche Bahn can continue for the time being.

The labor court in Frankfurt rejected an injunction on Thursday evening with which Deutsche Bahn wanted to stop the labor dispute.

Previously, the attempt by the presiding judge Volker Schulze to bring both sides back to the negotiating table with a settlement had failed.

The Union of German Locomotive Drivers (GDL) had again refused to enter into talks before all of its demands from last May were met.

The decision of the court can be appealed to the regional labor court in Frankfurt.

Negotiations would presumably be held there on Friday.

At first it was unclear whether the railway would appeal.

Third round of strike continues

The GDL rejected an improved offer from the group management on Wednesday, refused negotiations and continued their third round of strikes.

Since Thursday morning, rail passenger transport has also been on strike nationwide.

The strike began on Wednesday afternoon in freight traffic and is expected to end on Tuesday after five days.

The GDL chairman Claus Weselsky rejected the improved rail tariff offer because it should not apply to all GDL members. According to his presentation, the state-owned company demands that the scope of a new collective agreement be limited to drivers, as before. "This makes it clear that DB wants to withdraw some of the GDL members' constitutional rights," the unionist told Der Spiegel magazine. This threatens to split the union with first and second class members.

"The aim of the rail board is to destroy the existence of the GDL", Weselsky had already declared on Thursday morning in Leipzig.

With around 38,000 members, the GDL sees itself in fierce competition with the larger rail and transport union EVG.

According to the collective bargaining law passed in 2015, only the collective agreement of the larger employee representation should apply to two unions in one company.

This principle is called “one company - one collective agreement”.

In the majority of the 300 or so railway operations, this is the EVG from the perspective of the railway.

"Our demands have been on the table since May"

The GDL, which is actually anchored in driving operations, sees itself forced to expand its influence to other group subsidiaries - and now wants to regulate the conditions for workshop employees as well as for employees in administration or the rail infrastructure. This is reminiscent of the disputes in 2014/2015. At that time, the union wanted to extend its collective bargaining sovereignty to train attendants and shunting engine drivers - and it was successful after eight waves of strikes.

The railway suspects political and legal objectives behind the five-day strike of the GDL, which cannot be regulated in a collective agreement. Also in November 2014, the railway sued against ongoing strikes by the GDL in the collective bargaining round at the time. At that time, Deutsche Bahn argued that the industrial action would cause disproportionate damage - in vain. The GDL won two instances before the labor courts in Frankfurt. After the triumph, union chief Weselsky surprisingly broke off the ongoing strike. At that time he declared: "I am not standing here as a winner, but as the one who has defended the basic rights of the train driver and the train attendants."

Before the current court decision, the GDL boss was confident of victory in the Spiegel interview: “What can we be accused of?

Our demands have been on the table since May, and so far it seems that we have done everything right.

In 2015 we went on strike for 109 hours. ”The courts would have considered that admissible.

GDL rejects the offer with a 600 euro corona bonus

The railway made a new offer to the union on Wednesday and took up an important demand: This year, employees are to receive a corona bonus of up to 600 euros.

Weselsky also rejects the content of the offer and complains, for example, that there should be no wage increase this year.

From the point of view of the tariff expert Hagen Lesch from the employer-related institute of the German economy, the GDL is again fighting for its status as a tariff partner of the railway. Accordingly, Weselsky could have secured the status quo last year in an arbitration that ultimately failed. Then you could have found a regulation like 2015, with which the coexistence of EVG and GDL had been secured - waiving the regulations of the Collective Bargaining Act.

Interim injunctions against strikes are very seldom issued by German courts. One example is the decision of the Frankfurt Regional Labor Court, which in September 2015 stopped a strike by the Cockpit Association at Lufthansa in a second instance. The pilots had struck against the relocation of positions to the subsidiary Eurowings, which the tariff cannot be regulated at all, the presiding judge Michael Horcher had found at the time.

Rail passengers have no choice but to wait and see. The replacement schedule started stable on Thursday, said the railway. The company wanted to run around a quarter of the long-distance trains again. A basic offer of 40 percent is aimed for in regional and S-Bahn traffic. “The main strikes are in the east and in some metropolitan regions. Here in particular there are stronger restrictions. "