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German train strike could cost €1 billion
(www.dw.com)
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this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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Huh, sounds like it would have been cheaper to meet the train drivers with a decent wage offer.
Firstly, the main issue isn't money it's working hours.
But even if it were only about money, it wouldn't really work like that. The strike costs Germany about a billion in GDP. But only a fraction of that is paid for by Deutsche Bahn (the railway company). The losses mostly stem from people and goods becoming less mobile. Deutsche Bahn only loses some income from tickets which is nowhere near that much.
In the end allowing strikes in critical infrastructure isn't a good idea. Germany has a pretty good solution for that, it's about making people "Beamte"/officers. These are a special sort of civil servant that will essentially get court martialed for striking but Beamte are also practically unfirable and the constitution (and if it comes to it, the courts) ensures that they get adequate wages.
When Deutsche Bahn was an institution instead of a private company owned by the state Deutsche Bahn employees were (almost?) all Beamte. Some older ones still are (as I said, they can't be fired) and that's one of the reasons why some trains are still running. We need to get back to that or at least some rules that mimic the approach.
Any worker has the right to strike. If what is affected is critical infrastructure then the government has to step in on the side of the workers to force a settlement.
Just because you want unlimited flow of treats does not mean laborers should not be able to fight for better working conditions
Civil servants don't have that right in Germany, at the utmost they can work to rule. OTOH you practically can't be fired, you can't be laid off, you get a cushy pension and the state is legally required to have good working conditions, and courts will enforce it for you.
There's a reason that all those civil servants the DB inherited when it got privatised are still civil servants: The status is actually quite nice. Same goes for Deutsche Post and Telekom, they also still have tons of civil servants they, as private companies, have to treat like the state treats other civil servants.
Oh, side tidbit: Civil servants don't get days off. They get ordered to recuperate.
But aren't most civil servants that work nowadays Fahrdienstleiter at DB Netz?
Article from 2018 says biggest groups are 4200 engine drivers, 3600 traffic controllers and 1700 station service. Of 38000 civil servants 26500 in active duty (i.e not in pension), including 3500 suspended and currently working for more wages as managers.
Numbers certainly changed in six years but I wouldn't expect much drift in the ratios, it's not like engine drivers are on average older than traffic controllers or such.
2007 the DB had 20000 engine drivers, 8000 of which were civil servants. So maybe 3000 left now?
There need to be limits. Otherwise we'd have to pay the police and similar groups mid six-figures.
If workers in critical infrastructure would get so high wages through striking, why don't the train drivers have that already?
Because they're currently not working in critical infrastructure. With our current car based system the trains failing isn't that much of a problem. If a company really needs something to be delivered, they'll never ever transport it via train. They'll pay extra for it to come via lorry, because that's more reliable (and often also cheaper). And of course most people still have cars, so private transportation is covered as well. But if we manage to get away from car dependency to avoid missing all carbon emission goals, trains will become critical.
Besides that, there's also their employer. If the police went on strike, they'd be up against an entity that has almost unlimited funds (in relation to their wages) and that is willing to pay almost anything to prevent chaos in the streets. The state tends to be willing to pay for things that benefit the entire population. But Deutsche Bahn is more or less run as a private company. Hence most of the losses in question aren't paid for by Deutsche Bahn but by the rest of the population. So from their perspective it doesn't make sense to pay up.
The railway system is also shit for that reason, it's a chicken and egg problem
It is indeed. I.e. a prime example of cases where state invention works better than the free market. At least the rails and stations need to be run by the state and workers who can't strike (as I explained in another comment, we have good solutions for that in Germany). And of course they need to be provided for free (just like roads are, at least for the most part).
Whether we need huge railway company or whether having lots of a competing companies like in airtravel is a better option, is a different question. If there only were smaller companies running the trains, strikes wouldn't be a serious problem for the whole of society, but mostly for the companies running the trains.
To add to the absurdity of it, when the leaders of the Bahn announced first that the demand fo the traindrivers is inacceptable as their is no money available, they just had increased their salaries by millions.
Millions are peanuts in this context. We're talking about costs in the billions.
Not that the Bahn's board deserved any wage increases, but for this huge company it's a drop in the bucket.
Well it doesn't help argueing, that there would be no money for a wage increase. It was clearly hypocritical.
Yeah, it's in very bad taste.
Beamte can effectively strike, too. It's called Dienst nach Vorschrift (duty by the letter).
They follow every regulation to the letter, which grinds everything to a halt, and there's hardly anything anyone can do about it since they're unfirable.
To counter that, the state just pays them well enough so they don't need to strike.
To this day that company never healed from the Beamtentum and never will. Beamte are a horrible solution to anything and should only be a last resort, e.g. for the critical part of infrastructure as the railroad network. Not for the garbage companies operating on it.
Even then you do not need Beamte, you need proper laws regardless. Workers striking is mostly a good thing, even in "critical" infrastructure.
We need Beamte for judges and the like, but that's it.
For example if most teachers were not Beamte, they could strike and maybe there would be some improvements.
Or at least make them an offer you can actually discuss about instead of trying to defraud them.
And potentially cause growing class consciousness? Never, better not give those dirty labourers anything worthwhile.
But it's easier to go to the big media outlets and tell the workers "We have to be prepared to work harder and harder again" and "You also have to sweat", like the bosses of the biggest German bank, Bosch and our finance minister did.
(source)
I believe the liberals are really afraid of a wave of people realizing that working less for the same amount of money is an option. When the train drivers get their 35 hour work week without any pay cuts, there will be more people also taking a liking to that idea. Worst nightmare of the upper class.
The worst nightmare for them would be to realize that striking is the mildest form of worker protest.
Imagine if 50% of all train drivers quit on the same day, then reapplied a month later demanding 50% more pay.
And when they're rehired, they tell the other drivers how much they now make.
Or any offer, that wasnt just to then go "oh look, they are AT fault, they didnt accept" ... If you look at the actual offer youll see that they were totally in the right to decline
Can someone calculate? I would be curious, but I'm also lazy.
It's not that easy to calculate, especially since the 1 billion is about GDP losses, not losses in ticket sales.
I'm also lazy, but I'm willing to bet that the company loses less than 400M. After all the billion is for total costs is alreay on the high end. There are estiomates for a round a third. The unions demands amount to some 10k in costs per member (that's not what they'd get in hourly wage increases, but what the changes would cost). The union has some 40k members. So we'd be talking about some extra 4 billion. I.e. they'd have to strike for months to make it worth it. Now, not all those members are active, but if they get too much the other (bigger) union will demand more and so on.
For the country it's a vastly different story. If this were paid for by taxes and increasing GDP were the goal you'd most definitley not budge even slightly on the union's main demand (shorter working hours) since there's already a shortage in that area, but there'd be much more generious offers regarding wages. I.e. something like not a cent more for anyone working under 37 hours, but 50% more for people working 40+.
Thanks, but now you made me even more curious for a real calculation from both perspective - the state and company.
The DB is 100% state owned, in particular the federation. If the government says they don't want a GDP slump due to all this, then the DB has to make sure there's not going to be a GDP slump because of this.
But, nah, they rather try and squeeze money out of the DB.