A strike movement of a rare scale for Germany paralyzes the transport sector on Monday at the call of the unions which demand better wages to compensate for inflation.
Soaring prices have toughened wage negotiations in Europe’s largest economy. Strikes have multiplied since the beginning of the year, from schools to hospitals, including the Post Office.
Users must be patient Monday throughout the country where trains, buses, trams, planes are rare. Sea and river freight, motorway companies are also affected by this work stoppage.
It may not be the last, warns Freddie Schwarze, an employee of Munich airport, interviewed by AFP: “We are ready for other strikes. We have started and we will not stop”.
Georg Bachmaier, who works at the Federal Office for Waterways and Navigation, says he joined the movement because “we don’t have enough to live on”. “The heating costs are extreme, the same gasoline, we have to think every time we go shopping,” he says.
Prices have soared for more than a year in Germany, with inflation reaching 8.7% in February.
Unlike countries like France, such a unitary movement between the EVG and Ver.di unions, representing 230,000 railway company employees and 2.5 million service employees respectively, is extremely rare.
This so-called “warning” strike coincides with the start on Monday of the third round of tariff negotiations between the employers and the Ver.di union, which is demanding a 10.5% wage increase.
Employers (states, municipalities, public companies) offer a 5% increase with two single payments of 1,000 and 1,500 euros.
“This is the biggest participation in a strike for years”, welcomed Franck Werneke, boss of the Ver.di union.
The screens at Friedrichstrasse station in central Berlin show delays and cancellations.
Many users understand the movement while others are irritated: “It’s very good. You have to be attentive to the enormous work done by the strikers,” says Steffi Wisser, a 46-year-old cashier.
Angelika Koch, a 65-year-old retiree, points out that she also “earns little money, but “the strike is an endless spiral, it is useless”, she slices.
-French “Model”-
The federation of German airports (ADV) denounced a strategy of “escalating strikes on the model of France”, where days of mobilization follow one another against the pension reform.
“Germany is far from being the European strike day champion,” replied Martin Burkert, president of the EVG union.
The ground is increasingly favorable to the social movement in Germany, where the search for consensus usually characterizes relations between employers and unions.
“There have been more strikes in the last ten years in Germany than in previous decades,” observes Karl Brenke, an expert from the DIW economic institute interviewed by AFP.
With a particularly low level of unemployment since the end of the 2000s, the country suffers from a lack of manpower which puts the unions “in a position of strength” in the negotiations, according to Mr. Brenke.
Since the mid-2010s, they have succeeded in imposing increases, after a decade marked by the wage moderation policy of the Gerhard Schröder era, in the name of competitiveness.
In 2015, a record was set, with more than 2 million strike days in the year. Real wages increased systematically from 2014 to 2021, except in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The momentum was broken by inflation in 2022, with a decline of 3.1%.
“Everywhere we meet people who say: you are right to ask for money. We understand you. Inflation is too high and wages must increase,” Philipp Schumann, a member of the Ver union, told AFP. .di on strike in Frankfurt (west).
At the end of 2022, nearly 4 million German industrial workers won an 8.5% wage increase over two years, after several weeks punctuated by work stoppages.
27/03/2023 17:18:29 – Berlin (AFP) © 2023 AFP
