German union betrays train drivers

The defeat of the GDL union, which ended in the union agreeing to a strike ban effective until 2020, must be understood as a clearly planned and skilfully executed exercise by the employers to intimidate the entire German working class, but one that could have been avoided with the right political response on the side of the workers.

Following an unprecedented ten months’ dispute and nine strikes, including the longest in the history of German Railways (Deutsche Bahn, DB), the train drivers’ union (Gewerkschaft Deutscher Lokomotivführer, GDL) threw in the towel on 22 May, conceding to almost all of the employers’ demands and submitting the dispute to “independent” arbitrators, drawn from SPD and Left parties. This will have far-reaching consequences for German workers as it is the government’s aim to adopt a new law on contract unity (“one company, one contract”) and to consolidate the control of the corporatist DGB (Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund – German Confederation of Trade Unions) over unionized workers in both private companies and public services. In future, DGB-affiliated unions will exercise a virtual monopoly over the negotiation of pay agreements and will assume responsibility for maintaining labour discipline.

Throughout the dispute, the media has presented it as a power struggle between the “dictator” Claus Weselsky, leader of the GDL – and incidentally, a member of the ruling CDU party – and DB, which refused to recognize the union, and as an attempt by the GDL to increase the wages of train drivers at the expense of other DB workers. Certainly, there is competition between GDL and the Eisenbahn und Verkehrsgwerkschaft (EVG, affiliated to the DGB) for members and influence. But the underlying cause of unrest was DB’s attempt to shift jobs from train drivers to so-called locomotive drivers, who basically do the same work, but on lower pay and with far fewer restrictions on working time: “internal wage-dumping” as the GDL termed it. In an interview with Germany’s Die Zeit, Jan Wenske, a train driver from Frankfurt am Oder explained his reason for striking:

“What am I fighting for? For better working hours, a less burdensome workload and a limit on overtime. And for an independent wage settlement for drivers and guards. For me, it is not so much about higher wages, as I can get by on my money. Of course, it could always be more, but the limit on my working time would be more important for me. There are weeks in which I work 30 hours, then in the next week 60 hours, and the week after that again 50. How long you work and how – as a train driver you can never say for sure.

“That’s because of shift work. The timetables and rosters are so arranged as to bring maximum benefit to the employers. We have no say in it. Therefore we drive night shifts that last 12 hours, and repeatedly have idle time when we sit around for hours on end. We have to do a lot of overtime because of maintenance work on the tracks, changes in the roster or because colleagues are off sick. Then you get a call asking you to fill in. Quite frequently we have ‘availability weeks’ when you have to be ready to fill in at a moment’s notice and the employer can assign duties when there is a shortage of personnel. And these shortages are all the time: across Germany there are 600 to 800 too few drivers. In fact, you are permanently on duty for them.”

With such working conditions, which also include weekends and public holidays, since DB runs an almost full schedule on non-working days, a healthy family life is of course impossible, especially if the driver’s partner is also a shift-worker.

There existed a clear potential to extend and broaden this struggle. As Wenske went on to say, he was aware that many people, including friends, had been persuaded that the train drivers were “holding Germany hostage”. But when he explained why they were in struggle, they said, “Actually you are right. Carry on!”

With the Federal Government planning to introduce labour reform that would make militant action more difficult than ever within the confines of the law, the DB was prepared to play a waiting game and hold firm. By contrast the GDL made concessions, for example reducing its demand for a cut in working hours to a measly one hour a week. But this only encouraged DB to further toughen its stance. On 17 April it told the GDL that it intended revoke all existing agreements.

Under the terms of the new labour law, if there are several trade unions active in an organisation and no agreement exists over the workers they represent, only the agreement reached with the largest union will apply. At DB, this would be the EVG.

With the deadline for the new law approaching, the GDL buckled and called off its last strike, which was due to take place over the busy Whitsun weekend, putting the fate of railway workers instead into the hands of two arbitrators, both of whom have helped the Grand Coalition to roll out its austerity policies: Matthias Platzeck, former SPD President of the State of Brandenburg nominated by DB, and Bodo Ramelow, nominated by GDL. As President of the State of Thuringia, Ramelow presided over a Left-SPD-Green coalition committed to a stringent austerity programme.

Having secured the end of the GDL’s strikes, a few days later, on 26 May, DB concluded an eighteen-month pay deal with EVG, designed to eliminate any possibility of workers taking joint action between now and September 2016. EVG settled for an annual pay rise of 3.5%, having earlier threatened warning strikes if the offer fell short of 6%. Both DB and the EVB stated that the GDL arbitration had no impact on the settlement, a rather dubious claim since DB and EVB had been in talks for months. But even if true, it has clearly further strengthened the employers’ hand.

By calling off the strike, GDL signalled its willingness to work entirely within the legal framework. What it was clearly not prepared to do was to broaden the struggle to disaffected workers in other sectors (in recent months there have been strikes in Germany’s airlines, postal services, children’s care centres and hospitals) who would see their own situation reflected by the train drivers’ miserable lives and whose unions (for example Cockpit, the pilots’ union) are in a similar situation to the GDL. They will now see employers and the DGB cooperating even more closely to impose tougher working conditions.

Such a broad-based struggle would of course go far beyond the control of union leaders such as Weselsky, whose objective was essentially to win the state’s recognition for the GDL and little else. Moreover, such a struggle would unquestionably have a political dimension, posing an existential threat to the cosy relationships between employers and union leaders that are essential to the management of capitalism in Germany, as elsewhere.