2007 German national rail strike
Encyclopedia
The German national rail strike of 2007 was a strike
in Germany
by the locomotive engineers
union
, Gewerkschaft Deutscher Lokomotivführer
(GDL, or German Train Drivers' Union), which began on November 14, 2007 and ended on November 17, 2007. The union struck Deutsche Bahn
, the state-owned company which operates the German rail system. It was the largest strike in history (as of 2007) against Deutsche Bahn.
German Train Drivers' Union/Gewerkschaft Deutscher Lokomotivführer (known by its German
initials, GDL) is a relatively small union which represents about 34,000 train drivers in Germany.
In the fall of 2007, the union demanded a 31 percent wage increase from Deutsche Bahn, the state-owned company which operates the German rail system. The wage demand was far higher than the 4.5 percent wage increase won in July by Transnet Gewerkschaft (Transnet) and Verkehrsgewerkschaft GDBA (GDBA), the railway's two other large unions which together represent about 195,000 workers.
But GDL argued that German locomotive engineers are paid less than their counterparts in other European countries.
Deutsche Bahn rejected the wage demand. The company said that it was committed to the long-standing German trade union practice of bargaining a coordinated contract with all its unions at once to create uniform wage standards. Deutsche Bahn argued that meeting GDL's wage demands would break this pattern and lead to wage demands from other unions.
Deutsche Bahn countered by offering a one-time payment of €2,000 (about $
2,934) and a 10 percent wage increase, with a two-hour extension of the work week. But GDL chairman Manfred Schell
said the Deutsche Bahn offer was not acceptable as a basis for reopening talks. Deutsche Bahn refused to make another wage offer, and the company's 20-member supervisory board announced that it supported management's decision.
Both sides also engaged in a vitriolic war of words which held out little chance of avoiding a strike. Schell accused Deutsche Bahn of "raping" the country and the union, and declared DB had "provoked" the strike. Deutsche Bahn, in turn, accused GDL of "blackmail" and "madness" and said any strike would be "destructive" and an "economic disaster." Schell denounced the company, declaring, "This is all a theatrical performance by the railway."
Any strike was considered "...a bold gamble by an isolated union." GDL represented a mere 3 percent of Deutsche Bahn's workforce. No other Deutsche Bahn union supported the engineers' strike, nor did the German federation of trade unions, Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund
(DGB). But GDL had a tradition of breaking with other unions in wage negotiations. GDL also believed the time was ripe for a nationwide strike. Chancellor Angela Merkel
's government had planned to sell a 49 percent stake in Deutsche Bahn to the public. The union believed it had to seek its wage demands now before the privatization
effort began.
GDL engaged in a series of strikes throughout the summer and fall designed to increase pressure on the railway prior to engaging in a nationwide walkout. A short strike occurred in July 2007, and Deutsche Bahn sued the union for €5 million ($7.3 million) in damages. In October and early November 2007, GDL held several short strikes against local commuter lines, stopping work for a total of 65 hours. On November 10, 2007, the union held a 42-hour strike which stopped about 90 percent of all freight trains in the country. Deutsche Bahn estimated the November 10 freight strike cost €50 million ($73 million) each day.
Public sector workers in Germany have a severely restricted right to strike. Deutsche Bahn had previously won a court ruling limiting any strike to local service. But in early November 2007, the GDL union won the right to strike freight and long-distance trains as well.
(CET) on November 14, while the strike against local and long-distance passenger trains would start at 2:00 a.m. CET on November 15. The union said the walkout would end at 2:00 a.m. CET on November 17, 2007.
Both strikes began on schedule.
Chancellor Merkel, adhering to the federal government's tradition of not intervening in labor disputes, declined to intervene. But other federal government officials pleaded for the resumption of negotiations. Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee
said ministry officials were working behind the scenes to mediate the dispute.
As anticipated, the strike affected train service nationwide. However, the company brought in 1,000 managers and other employees to keep trains running. Still, more than 40 percent of all freight trains were halted. While 50 percent of regional passenger trains in western Germany were running, only one in 10 regional passenger trains operated in eastern Germany. Disruptions in local service varied. In Berlin
and Munich
, commuter service was only minimally interrupted, but by the end of the day only a third of all trains had run. But in Hamburg
, Frankfurt
and Stuttgart
, major cutbacks in train schedules occurred. In North Rhine-Westphalia
, Germany's most populous state, trains ran every hour. Two-thirds of the country's high-speed InterCityExpress
trains were running normally.
The economic impact of the strike appeared to be heavy. Deutsche Bahn said the strike cost it €50 million ($73 million) a day. Automobile manufacturers, which depended heavily on trains for moving vehicles, found inventories backing up immediately. Audi
shuttered at least one plant in order prevent an additional backlog from occurring. Seaports, especially Hamburg, were clogged with containers
. Germany's steel industry, which transports half its goods by rail, was also badly affected. Federal officials expressed public concern that the strike could affect the economy, which had slowed in recent months
Public support for the strike was relatively strong. Unscientific polls of commuters by newspapers and television stations showed support for the train drivers. A scientific poll conducted by Infratest Dimap for the public-service broadcaster ARD
found that 61 percent of the people support the workers. Of 1,003 people surveyed, 47 percent said Deutsche Bahn was to blame for the strike, while only 25 percent fingered GDL. Nevertheless, the ARD poll found that public support for the union had slipped by five percentage points since mid-October. A second poll for the public opinion company Forsa for the newspaper Bild
showed only 45 percent of the public supported GDL.
As the strike neared its conclusion, GDL Chairman Schell said he was open to a 31 percent pay increase without a separate collective bargaining agreement. Other union leaders suggested that the union might even accept a pay raise as low as 15 percent.
But Schell and other union officials reiterated their determination to win the labor dispute. Schell announced that the union might engage in a new, open-ended strike if no new offer was forthcoming from the employer. One report suggested that the union might extend its current strike through Christmas.
Deutsche Bahn did not take such threats lightly. It advertised throughout Europe for new train drivers. The company received 5,000 applications, and hired 1,000 new drivers. Deutsche Bahn said the newly hired locomotive engineers would be used to meet increases in demand, and not to help break
any future strike.
GDL Chairman Schell declared that the union was "very happy" with the results of the national rail strike. However, Schell threatened another national rail strike if the union did not receive a new wage offer from Deutsche Bahn by November 19, 2007. Schell said the union would meet early on the week of November 19 to decide its next move.
Several news outlets subsequently reported that Deutsche Bahn planned to make a new wage proposal in order to avoid an indefinite strike. At least one newspaper said Deutsche Bahn planned to agree to the union's primary demand—a different contract from the one reached with the railway's two other labor unions last July.
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
by the locomotive engineers
Railroad engineer
A railroad engineer, locomotive engineer, train operator, train driver or engine driver is a person who drives a train on a railroad...
union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
, Gewerkschaft Deutscher Lokomotivführer
Gewerkschaft Deutscher Lokomotivführer
The Gewerkschaft Deutscher Lokomotivführer is a German trade union present in train companies. It has a membership of 34,000 , concentrated in the former East Germany.-2007 strike:...
(GDL, or German Train Drivers' Union), which began on November 14, 2007 and ended on November 17, 2007. The union struck Deutsche Bahn
Deutsche Bahn
Deutsche Bahn AG is the German national railway company, a private joint stock company . Headquartered in Berlin, it came into existence in 1994 as the successor to the former state railways of Germany, the Deutsche Bundesbahn of West Germany and the Deutsche Reichsbahn of East Germany...
, the state-owned company which operates the German rail system. It was the largest strike in history (as of 2007) against Deutsche Bahn.
Origins of the strike
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
initials, GDL) is a relatively small union which represents about 34,000 train drivers in Germany.
In the fall of 2007, the union demanded a 31 percent wage increase from Deutsche Bahn, the state-owned company which operates the German rail system. The wage demand was far higher than the 4.5 percent wage increase won in July by Transnet Gewerkschaft (Transnet) and Verkehrsgewerkschaft GDBA (GDBA), the railway's two other large unions which together represent about 195,000 workers.
But GDL argued that German locomotive engineers are paid less than their counterparts in other European countries.
Deutsche Bahn rejected the wage demand. The company said that it was committed to the long-standing German trade union practice of bargaining a coordinated contract with all its unions at once to create uniform wage standards. Deutsche Bahn argued that meeting GDL's wage demands would break this pattern and lead to wage demands from other unions.
Deutsche Bahn countered by offering a one-time payment of €2,000 (about $
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
2,934) and a 10 percent wage increase, with a two-hour extension of the work week. But GDL chairman Manfred Schell
Manfred Schell
Manfred Schell is a German trade unionist. Before he retired in 2008, he was the leader of Gewerkschaft Deutscher Lokomotivführer .He is a member of the German Christian Democratic Union....
said the Deutsche Bahn offer was not acceptable as a basis for reopening talks. Deutsche Bahn refused to make another wage offer, and the company's 20-member supervisory board announced that it supported management's decision.
Both sides also engaged in a vitriolic war of words which held out little chance of avoiding a strike. Schell accused Deutsche Bahn of "raping" the country and the union, and declared DB had "provoked" the strike. Deutsche Bahn, in turn, accused GDL of "blackmail" and "madness" and said any strike would be "destructive" and an "economic disaster." Schell denounced the company, declaring, "This is all a theatrical performance by the railway."
Any strike was considered "...a bold gamble by an isolated union." GDL represented a mere 3 percent of Deutsche Bahn's workforce. No other Deutsche Bahn union supported the engineers' strike, nor did the German federation of trade unions, Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund
German Confederation of Trade Unions
The Confederation of German Trade Unions is an umbrella organisation for eight German trade unions, in total representing more than 7 million people . It was founded in Munich, 12 October 1949.The DGB coordinates joint demands and activities within the German trade union movement...
(DGB). But GDL had a tradition of breaking with other unions in wage negotiations. GDL also believed the time was ripe for a nationwide strike. Chancellor Angela Merkel
Angela Merkel
Angela Dorothea Merkel is the current Chancellor of Germany . Merkel, elected to the Bundestag from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, has been the chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union since 2000, and chairwoman of the CDU-CSU parliamentary coalition from 2002 to 2005.From 2005 to 2009 she led a...
's government had planned to sell a 49 percent stake in Deutsche Bahn to the public. The union believed it had to seek its wage demands now before the privatization
Privatization
Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of a business, enterprise, agency or public service from the public sector to the private sector or to private non-profit organizations...
effort began.
GDL engaged in a series of strikes throughout the summer and fall designed to increase pressure on the railway prior to engaging in a nationwide walkout. A short strike occurred in July 2007, and Deutsche Bahn sued the union for €5 million ($7.3 million) in damages. In October and early November 2007, GDL held several short strikes against local commuter lines, stopping work for a total of 65 hours. On November 10, 2007, the union held a 42-hour strike which stopped about 90 percent of all freight trains in the country. Deutsche Bahn estimated the November 10 freight strike cost €50 million ($73 million) each day.
Public sector workers in Germany have a severely restricted right to strike. Deutsche Bahn had previously won a court ruling limiting any strike to local service. But in early November 2007, the GDL union won the right to strike freight and long-distance trains as well.
The strike
GDL announced that the strike against freight service would begin at noon Central European TimeCentral European Time
Central European Time , used in most parts of the European Union, is a standard time that is 1 hour ahead of Coordinated Universal Time . The time offset from UTC can be written as +01:00...
(CET) on November 14, while the strike against local and long-distance passenger trains would start at 2:00 a.m. CET on November 15. The union said the walkout would end at 2:00 a.m. CET on November 17, 2007.
Both strikes began on schedule.
Chancellor Merkel, adhering to the federal government's tradition of not intervening in labor disputes, declined to intervene. But other federal government officials pleaded for the resumption of negotiations. Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee
Wolfgang Tiefensee
Wolfgang Tiefensee is a German SPD politician. He was the Federal Minister for Transport, Building and Urban Development in the grand coalition cabinet led by Angela Merkel since November 22, 2005....
said ministry officials were working behind the scenes to mediate the dispute.
As anticipated, the strike affected train service nationwide. However, the company brought in 1,000 managers and other employees to keep trains running. Still, more than 40 percent of all freight trains were halted. While 50 percent of regional passenger trains in western Germany were running, only one in 10 regional passenger trains operated in eastern Germany. Disruptions in local service varied. In Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, commuter service was only minimally interrupted, but by the end of the day only a third of all trains had run. But in Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
and Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
, major cutbacks in train schedules occurred. In North Rhine-Westphalia
North Rhine-Westphalia
North Rhine-Westphalia is the most populous state of Germany, with four of the country's ten largest cities. The state was formed in 1946 as a merger of the northern Rhineland and Westphalia, both formerly part of Prussia. Its capital is Düsseldorf. The state is currently run by a coalition of the...
, Germany's most populous state, trains ran every hour. Two-thirds of the country's high-speed InterCityExpress
InterCityExpress
The Intercity-Express or ICE is a system of high-speed trains predominantly running in Germany and neighbouring countries. It is the highest service category offered by DB Fernverkehr and is the flagship of Deutsche Bahn...
trains were running normally.
The economic impact of the strike appeared to be heavy. Deutsche Bahn said the strike cost it €50 million ($73 million) a day. Automobile manufacturers, which depended heavily on trains for moving vehicles, found inventories backing up immediately. Audi
Audi
Audi AG is a German automobile manufacturer, from supermini to crossover SUVs in various body styles and price ranges that are marketed under the Audi brand , positioned as the premium brand within the Volkswagen Group....
shuttered at least one plant in order prevent an additional backlog from occurring. Seaports, especially Hamburg, were clogged with containers
Containerization
Containerization is a system of freight transport based on a range of steel intermodal containers...
. Germany's steel industry, which transports half its goods by rail, was also badly affected. Federal officials expressed public concern that the strike could affect the economy, which had slowed in recent months
Public support for the strike was relatively strong. Unscientific polls of commuters by newspapers and television stations showed support for the train drivers. A scientific poll conducted by Infratest Dimap for the public-service broadcaster ARD
ARD (broadcaster)
ARD is a joint organization of Germany's regional public-service broadcasters...
found that 61 percent of the people support the workers. Of 1,003 people surveyed, 47 percent said Deutsche Bahn was to blame for the strike, while only 25 percent fingered GDL. Nevertheless, the ARD poll found that public support for the union had slipped by five percentage points since mid-October. A second poll for the public opinion company Forsa for the newspaper Bild
Bild-Zeitung
The Bild is a German tabloid published by Axel Springer AG. The paper is published from Monday to Saturday, while on Sundays, Bild am Sonntag is published instead, which has a different style and its own editors...
showed only 45 percent of the public supported GDL.
As the strike neared its conclusion, GDL Chairman Schell said he was open to a 31 percent pay increase without a separate collective bargaining agreement. Other union leaders suggested that the union might even accept a pay raise as low as 15 percent.
But Schell and other union officials reiterated their determination to win the labor dispute. Schell announced that the union might engage in a new, open-ended strike if no new offer was forthcoming from the employer. One report suggested that the union might extend its current strike through Christmas.
Deutsche Bahn did not take such threats lightly. It advertised throughout Europe for new train drivers. The company received 5,000 applications, and hired 1,000 new drivers. Deutsche Bahn said the newly hired locomotive engineers would be used to meet increases in demand, and not to help break
Strikebreaker
A strikebreaker is a person who works despite an ongoing strike. Strikebreakers are usually individuals who are not employed by the company prior to the trade union dispute, but rather hired prior to or during the strike to keep the organisation running...
any future strike.
Conclusion and aftermath
The national rail strike ended as the union had planned, at 2:00 a.m. CET on the morning of Saturday, November 17, 2007.GDL Chairman Schell declared that the union was "very happy" with the results of the national rail strike. However, Schell threatened another national rail strike if the union did not receive a new wage offer from Deutsche Bahn by November 19, 2007. Schell said the union would meet early on the week of November 19 to decide its next move.
Several news outlets subsequently reported that Deutsche Bahn planned to make a new wage proposal in order to avoid an indefinite strike. At least one newspaper said Deutsche Bahn planned to agree to the union's primary demand—a different contract from the one reached with the railway's two other labor unions last July.