Germany -Railway reaches deal -May 27, 2015

Workers at public railway company Deutsche Bahn organised a week-long strike, affecting 5.5 million passengers, as trade unions and Deutsche Bahn failed to reach an agreement on pay and working hours. The strike, which was announced as a two day strike and turned into a week, was the longest in the history of Deutsche Bahn and paralysed both passenger and freight services. Deutsche Bahn is conducting separate negotiations with trade union EVG, which represents most railway-related workers and professionals, and the smaller train drivers' union GDL. The GDL union agreed to begin arbitration with rail operator Deutsche Bahn. According to GDL one of the key sticking points had been solved and GDL will now be able to have its own separate agreement apart from any agreement reached by the larger union EVG. A few days later EVG stated it had agreed with the company a wage hike for all employees from July 1 of 3.5%, or at least 80 euro more per month. From May 2016, they would receive a further 1.6% increase or at least 40 euro per month.

English: http://www.wsj.com/articles/german-train-engineers-to-end-strike …    

For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the communications officer at the ETUI, Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org. For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net.