Lahr/Berlin (dpa/lsw) – The railway company SWEG and the train drivers’ union GDL have suspended arbitration in the current wage dispute until April 1st. This was announced by the collective bargaining parties on Monday. Until then, the talks were to be continued without an arbitrator. From April 2nd, the arbitration procedure should then be continued. According to the announcement, the GDL will not call for strikes during this period.
Both sides thanked the chairmen of the arbitration proceedings, Rezzo Schlauch and Matthias Platzeck, “for their valuable support so far”. The parties involved did not provide any information on the current status of the proceedings.
The background to the dispute is a collective bargaining dispute in which the GDL would like to negotiate a collective agreement for the more than 500 railway workers not only for the former Abellio Rail Baden-Württemberg (today SBS), but for the entire SWEG group. The group has a total of 1800 employees. The SWEG rejects this and does not want to take over the SBS permanently. The Abellio daughter got into financial difficulties at the end of 2021. The company then took over the state-owned SWEG for an initial period of two years.
Since late last summer, the GDL had repeatedly called for short-term work stoppages at SWEG and SBS.
