The planned 50-hour warning strike at the railway has been surprisingly cancelled. Deutsche Bahn and the railway and transport union (EVG) agreed to a settlement before the labor court in Frankfurt am Main, as both sides and the court announced on Saturday. "Against this background, we have suspended the strike at DB AG for the time being," the EVG announced. Previously, the Hessischer Rundfunk had reported on the agreement.

The warning strike would have led to a two-day standstill of long-distance traffic on Monday and Tuesday, and a train would hardly have been able to run in regional and freight traffic.

Deutsche Bahn warns of restrictions

Despite the cancellation of the strike, the railway warned of restrictions in the train service in the next few days. "DB is facing the great challenge of rescheduling around 50,000 train journeys as well as the associated shift and deployment schedules," it said. The state-owned company wants to provide information about the exact timetable offer from Sunday noon.

The EVG emphasized that the strike call still applies to some railway companies. Only the industrial action at Deutsche Bahn was cancelled. Since the end of February, EVG has also been negotiating new collective agreements with around 50 competitors of Deutsche Bahn. From the union's point of view, talks with most of these companies are not making significant progress. In the case of these mostly regionally operating railways, there is still a risk of failures.

The warning strike announcement on Thursday morning brought plenty of momentum to the talks between EVG and DB. Deutsche Bahn tried offensively to prevent the strike. However, an attempt at negotiation failed on Thursday evening, and on Friday afternoon an ultimatum from the EVG for a new offer from DB expired.

Deutsche Bahn assesses planned strike as "disproportionate"

In the next step, the company went to the labor court in Frankfurt am Main and filed an urgent application to avert the warning strike by means of a preliminary injunction for injunctive relief. DB assessed the planned strike as "disproportionate" and said it would harm customers and "uninvolved third parties". There were almost four hours of discussion in court on Saturday before both sides agreed to the settlement.

"Deutsche Bahn's appeal to the labor court was worthwhile for everyone," said DB Chief Human Resources Officer Martin Seiler, according to a statement. With the settlement, both sides agreed, according to DB, "to negotiate quickly and constructively, with the aim of an early conclusion".

A sticking point in the ongoing wage dispute is the issue of the minimum wage, which, according to both sides, also took up a lot of space in court. About 2000,12 employees currently receive the statutory minimum wage of 12 euros only through allowances. The EDC has made it a condition for all further negotiations that this minimum wage is first included in the collective bargaining tables. In doing so, it wants to ensure that these <> euros per hour form the basis for all further negotiation results.

Initially, the railway did not want to meet any preconditions before the actual negotiations. In the meantime, however, it has promised to include the minimum wage in advance in the tariff tables. Finally, there was a dispute about whether future negotiation results should also be written one-to-one in the tables for the lowest wage groups or paid out differently, for example by means of allowances. At this point, the railway argues that otherwise the industry-standard wage, for example for security and cleaning staff, would be far exceeded. The EDC therefore stuck to its warning strike plans - at least until the court hearing on Saturday.

The current round of collective bargaining affects 230,000 employees, 180,000 of whom work for Deutsche Bahn. The dispute over the minimum wage therefore affects just one percent of the people for whom negotiations are taking place. For the union, however, this point is crucial - it wants to disproportionately strengthen employees with low wages, for example with a view to inflation. In addition, the aim is likely to be to attract new members in these wage groups or these sectors through their commitment.

The fact that the lower wage groups are to be disproportionately strengthened is also shown by the main demand on the industry, which focuses on a high fixed amount: the union wants to achieve 650 euros more per month for the employees of the 50 railway companies, only for the upper incomes it demands percentages, specifically 12 percent. According to the union, the term should be 12 months.

The railway has recently promised tax-free and duty-free one-off payments of a total of 2850 euros as well as gradual increases of 10 percent for the lower and middle and 8 percent for the upper income groups - all this with a term of 27 months.