Azernews.Az

By Bloomberg

Deutsche Bahn AG, the state-owned railway, is asking a German court to stop the longest transport walkout in the country's history.

"We want to leave nothing undone and have decided with a heavy heart to now take legal steps against this strike," Ulrich Weber, the railway's personnel chief, said today in a statement. "We are aware that the judges in the past often decided against the employer. We are accepting that risk."

Deutsche Bahn wants a Frankfurt labor court to halt a GDL union strike set to run through Monday, arguing that the walkout will do "'severe damage'' to customers, the company and entire German economy.

Passenger train drivers walked out this morning, joining freight-rail staff who started picketing yesterday, in the sixth strike in nine weeks at Deutsche Bahn. Caught in the middle are passengers traveling across the country and commuters in cities including Berlin, expecting one of the busiest tourism weekends ever for celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The railway said today about one-third of long-distance trains were set to depart, with regional and commuter services running at lower frequencies. In the eastern part of the country, as much as 85 percent of local train traffic is canceled, Deutsche Bahn said.

Rose Mittelbach is among travelers losing patience with train drivers. The Munich resident, who set off yesterday on an 880-kilometer (545 miles) round-trip to the eastern town of Halle to celebrate her mother's 90th birthday, was forced to take an extra day's vacation to avoid walkouts set to cripple rail travel and snarl road traffic over the next four days.

Economic Impact

''I have no sympathy for this strike action," Mittelbach said at Munich's main train station. "It's just a power struggle between unions, and we have to suffer."

Chancellor Angela Merkel warned of the economic fallout as the country teeters on the brink of a recession, saying the GDL train drivers union has a "broad responsibility."

"It's also about the future of the economy," Merkel said in Berlin yesterday. "I can only call on the recognition of responsibility to find a solution that can cause as little damage as possible to our country in exercising the right to strike."

Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, the world's biggest maker of premium cars, said about 60 percent of its vehicles leave factories by train, and it's making contingency plans. Volkswagen AG, which operates 10 German plants at its main VW brand alone, said it's closely following the walkout.

"Currently our production runs without constraints," Christoph Adomat, a VW spokesman, said in an e-mail. "We're monitoring the further development related to the train driver strike very closely."

Halting Work

The chemical and steel industries will be among the worst affected, said Dieter Schweer, a senior official at Germany's BDI industry federation. Economic costs associated with the walkout will be "enormous," he said.

The GDL has called on more than 19,000 train drivers, switch-yard engineers and conductors to halt work through Nov. 10. The union, with about 34,000 members, claims to represent 80 percent of train drivers at Deutsche Bahn and has been staging strikes since early September in a push to limit overtime, reduce weekly hours and raise pay by 5 percent.

While it's "unfortunate" that the strikes will affect travel during the 25th anniversary celebrations, "there's not one single day among the 365 that is suited for a strike," Claus Weselsky, GDL chairman, told reporters yesterday. The walkout is aimed at "making the company give in because of the economic damage it's suffering."

Union Curbs

The dispute is as much about the union minnow making its voice heard as it is about pay and policies. GDL is competing for train drivers and transportation employees with larger rival EVG, which has about 213,000 members in transport industries, and claims to represent about 5,000 train drivers, according to its website.

The German government is proposing curbs to union power amid the walkouts, saying last month that it's looking at limiting the role of smaller labor groups such as GDL in wage negotiations. While the bill wouldn't directly curtail strikes, it would limit future wage talks to the biggest union for each group of employees and give courts more power to intervene.

A train driver after 20 years on the job earns about 1,750 euros a month after taxes, according to the union. The average salary before taxes in Germany's manufacturing and services industries was 3,449 euros last year, according to calculations by the Federal Statistics Office.

"I do agree that train workers should get more money and a higher pension -- it's a job that requires taking responsibility," said Ernst Lorenz, a Berliner visiting his son in Munich who returned to the German capital a day earlier than planned. "But the union head is only obsessed with getting more power, and his arguments aren't convincing."