Mrs Ingenschay, Mr Loroch, you are the chief negotiator for the EDC, but instead of negotiating, you are now announcing another large-scale warning strike at the railways. Why is that?
Corinna Budras
Business correspondent in Berlin.
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Ingenschay: We are open to a negotiable offer at any time. But it must be a written offer that seriously addresses our demands. As long as this is not the case, the only thing left for us to do is to go on strike.
This time you're going one step further, what do you have in mind?
Ingenschay: This time we will not call for a strike in all 50 companies with which we are negotiating. This does not apply to companies where we are making significant progress in the negotiations. At Deutsche Bahn, we don't see any movement at all. Therefore, we will call for a warning strike from Sunday, 22:00, to Tuesday, 24:00. In total, we paralyze Deutsche Bahn, as well as the other companies, for more than two days for 50 hours.
Will there be an emergency service?
Ingenschay: We will not conclude an emergency service agreement. This means that we only allow trains to run when life and limb are endangered, for example when an ICE is parked somewhere on the track. Of course, there is no question that we will help out. But there will be no exceptions for energy, coal trains and military transport.
This will be a severe blow to the economy.
Loroch: This time we want to hit the economy massively, because we hope that this will bring more movement into the collective bargaining. But production is not yet at risk with more than two days of downtime, don't worry.
What did the two companies that you explicitly exempt from the work stoppages do differently? How could they appease you?
Ingenschay: They simply took the trouble to orient themselves to the structure of our demands. The offers are not yet the last word in wisdom, but at least in these cases we can say: We can negotiate with them. The social component is very important to us. We want at least 650 euros a month for everyone. Of course, we can talk about the specific figure, but it is clear that we want to relieve the burden on the lower income groups more clearly than on the upper ones. This is very important to our members.
After all, the railway promises short-term one-off payments of just under 3000,10 euros and later an increase of 1 percent for the lower wage groups. The offer already has a volume of 3.<> billion euros. Isn't that enough?
Loroch: Of course, that's a decent number, but Deutsche Bahn sinks such sums into Stuttgart 21 in no time at all. And it does not change the fact that we are not calling for the one-off payment at all.
Ingenschay: You can certainly talk about the topic of one-off payments, but first of all it's about a sustainable increase for colleagues, otherwise it's nothing more than an ice cube melting in the sun. The runtime is also important to us. We are asking for 12 months, and during this period we really do need an increase that is reflected in the pay scale and not just a compensatory premium. The two offers, which we consider negotiable, already have a sustainable increase in the first year. We have already signalled to Deutsche Bahn that we can think again about the one-off payment together, but we need a sign that the employer is thinking about a sustainable increase in the first year.
Loroch: The issue of the minimum wage must also be regulated in such a way that all colleagues are first raised to the minimum wage and then the increase is saddled on top. This only affects about 2500 people! Compared to the total volume, we are talking about a vanishingly small amount of 0.2 percent. It is clear that we as a trade union must insist on this. The only thing that would have had to be distributed differently was the Deutsche Bahn personnel board member Martin Seiler and the issue would have been solved technically and financially. Either he wants to delay or he doesn't want to solve the issue of the minimum wage at all.