Warning strikes in the ticker

Massive warning strikes in local transport on Thursday and Friday

8:43 a.m.: The Verdi union wants to paralyze local public transport in numerous large cities on Friday with a warning strike. In Munich, work is even to be stopped on Thursday and Friday, as the union announced on Tuesday. In the state capital, subways, trams and around half of the buses will be affected from Thursday morning to Friday night. In addition, local transport employees in the greater Nuremberg, Augsburg, Regensburg, Ingolstadt, Bamberg, Landshut and Bayreuth areas are called on to go on warning strikes on Friday.

The MVG expects “significant restrictions on the subway, tram and bus”. Regulated operation will only be possible again on Saturday. However, it is planned to maintain at least part of the line operation. In the case of the subways, line operations must first be completely stopped for safety reasons. Whether it can be resumed later depends on how many staff are available despite the warning strikes. With the buses, a thinned-out cycle is to be offered with the private cooperation partners. The Munich S-Bahn trains are not affected by the work stoppages, the operator is the Deutsche Bahn. According to Verdi, explicit school buses will also not be affected.

He expects a high level of participation, said union secretary Franz Schütz in Munich. The frustration among the employees is great. According to Verdi, there is a separate in-house collective agreement for MVG employees in Munich, which is worse than the collective agreement for local public transport. The union calls for an adjustment here. In addition, she demands an increase of 10.5 percent in the collective bargaining, but at least 500 euros.

With the warning strike on Thursday and Friday, you are not only pursuing this goal, you are also demanding that politicians provide the necessary funding for public transport. The union sees massive deficits here that would have to be eliminated if the turnaround in traffic is to succeed.

MVG boss Ingo Wortmann also emphasized the importance of the traffic turnaround. “The mobility industry is facing the greatest challenges of the past decades,” he said. There is a lack of solid and sustainable financing and staff. On these points one agrees with Verdi.

The deputy regional manager of Verdi Bavaria, Sinan Öztürk, called on employers to make public transport more attractive as a workplace. “To ensure that employees do not leave the company and that new employees can be recruited, pay must also be significantly better,” he said. “Employers now have the opportunity to do this in the ongoing collective bargaining.”

The action was announced by Verdi together with the climate activists from Fridays for Future, the organization is calling for a global climate strike on Friday. “Public transport is the backbone of climate-neutral mobility,” emphasized the spokeswoman for Fridays for Future Munich, Jana Häfner. Society must value the work of the people who work there “with more money and better working conditions”. Without them, the mobility turnaround and thus the climate goals will not be achieved.

Bavaria is not the only federal state affected. Verdi is also planning warning strikes in Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg, Saxony, Lower Saxony and Rhineland-Palatinate for Friday.

All-day public sector warning strikes on Thursday in Kiel

8:40 a.m.: Closed daycare centers, uncollected rubbish, restricted opening hours in offices – people in the north have to adjust to restrictions on Thursday because of a all-day warning strike in the public sector wage dispute. Selected departments in Schleswig-Holstein as well as daycare centers, waste disposal, the Bundeswehr administration and various offices and parts of the social administration are on strike, the civil servants’ association dbb Schleswig-Holstein announced on Wednesday. The event is also supported by officials from the federal administration, in particular from the federal police and customs, since their salary depends on the result of the collective bargaining round.

According to the information, the warning strike is intended to send a clear signal in the current income round. Around 1,000 employees are expected to march from the Wunderino Arena to the Rathausplatz in a demonstration in the morning. A rally is to take place there at around 12 noon.

The second round of collective bargaining for around 2.5 million federal and local employees recently ended without a result. The employers had submitted an offer, but the unions immediately rejected it as insufficient. Verdi demands 10.5 percent more income for employees, but at least 500 euros more per month. The employer side had rejected the demands as “unaffordable”.

Restrictions in local transport in Colognewarning strikeam Freitag

Wednesday, March 01, 2023 at 08:39: A warning strike by the Verdi union on Friday led to severe restrictions in the Stadtbahn and bus services of the Cologne transport company (KVB). From 3:00 a.m. until the start of operations on Saturday, no KVB trams should run, as the company announced on Wednesday. For this purpose, only bus trips carried out by subcontractors are possible, which are to be displayed to passengers in the electronic timetable information.

Since the warning strike is also to take place in Bonn, no traffic is possible on the Stadtbahn lines 16 and 18 either. Customer centers and sales outlets remain closed. According to the information, Deutsche Bahn, Mittelrheinbahn and other railway companies are not affected by the warning strike.

Verdi announces warning strikes in NRW local transport for Friday

3:07 p.m.: Verdi has announced extensive warning strikes in local public transport in North Rhine-Westphalia for Friday. A focus is the Ruhr area from Duisburg to Dortmund, said a spokesman for Verdi NRW on Tuesday. He named the Rhineland as a further focus. “We expect a high strike participation and over 10,000 strikers nationwide on Friday,” he said.

The Verdi district of Westphalia has already announced that it will call on employees of the Dortmund-based company DSW21 to go on a warning strike on Friday. According to an overview of the Verdi state district, warning strikes are also planned at the Cologne transport company (KVB) and at SWB in Bonn, the Rhein-Sieg transport company (RSVG) and the Wupsi local transport company in Leverkusen.

With the warning strikes in local public transport in North Rhine-Westphalia and other federal states on Friday, Verdi wants to increase the pressure in collective bargaining for the public sector in the municipalities and the federal government.

The warning strikes are to take place at the same time as a global climate strike by the climate movement Fridays for Future this Friday. “We want to combine the global climate strike day with the 200 actions of Fridays for Future with warning strikes in local public transport,” said Deputy Verdi boss Christine Behle in Berlin. “A traffic turnaround will not be possible without investing in employees as well.”

The employers had presented an offer during the nationwide negotiations for employees in the federal and local governments. It includes a pay increase of five percent in two steps and one-off payments totaling 2,500 euros. The unions rejected the offer as insufficient. Verdi and the civil servants’ association are demanding 10.5 percent more income, but at least 500 euros more per month. Collective bargaining is scheduled to continue on March 27th.

Behle said about the offer: “It’s a slap in the face for the employees.”

In North Rhine-Westphalia, the wave of warning strikes continued on Tuesday. One focus of Verdi’s campaigns was in the greater Düsseldorf area. “All wheels stand still here,” said Stephanie Peifer, spokeswoman for the Düssel-Rhein-Wupper district, on Tuesday morning. Local transport, daycare centers, garbage disposal or street cleaning in Düsseldorf, Solingen, Wuppertal and Remscheid are affected. 6,000 strikers took part in a rally in Wuppertal. The trade union had also called for warning strikes in the western Ruhr area, in East Westphalia and in the Aachen city region.

According to the Rheinbahn, the company’s entire network was affected on Tuesday: Düsseldorf, Meerbusch, the Mettmann district as well as connections to Duisburg, Krefeld, Neuss and Ratingen. According to Verdi, the warning strike should again last about 24 hours. The local transport union has called for a two-day warning strike at the Rheinbahn on Tuesday and Wednesday. According to the Rheinbahn, the entire network is also affected on Wednesday. However, the company is trying to make journeys possible on some subway and bus lines.

There were also warning strikes in Oberhausen on Tuesday. For example, waste incineration, daycare centers and local transport were affected, said a spokesman for the Verdi district of Ruhr-West. Düsseldorf and Cologne/Bonn airports returned to normal operations on Tuesday. The two largest NRW airports were affected by a warning strike on Monday with a total of hundreds of flight cancellations.

Warning strikes hit administrations and daycare centers – local transport is to follow

2:14 p.m.: With further warning strikes, public sector employees again paralyzed many facilities in Lower Saxony on Tuesday. Municipal authorities and daycare centers in the south-east of the country, for example, were affected, where Verdi had a regional focus. “In Salzgitter it was almost the entire administration,” said the service union in the afternoon. Around 360 people took part in a demo there. In neighboring Peine there were 250.

There was a central rally in Hanover, where, according to the civil servants’ association dbb, more than 1,500 employees gathered in front of the main train station. The dbb had called for a nationwide strike. Federal chief Ulrich Silberbach demanded: “Investments in personnel, equipment and attractive working conditions are essential for the future viability of the federal government and local authorities.”

The unions are not satisfied with the previous offer from the employer in the current collective bargaining round. Silberbach announced that the warning strikes and protests would be “intensified”. In the coming days, Verdi also wants to do more, especially in local transport: The federal leadership of the union announced that further work stoppages were planned in several countries in this area on Friday.

Even before that, there should be major restrictions on buses and trains in many Lower Saxony cities and districts on Thursday. Verdi indicated this in south-eastern Lower Saxony (Salzgitter, Wolfenbüttel, Helmstedt, Bad Harzburg), but also in the north-east (Lüneburg) and in Cuxhaven, Stade, Buxtehude and Winsen an der Luhe. There should also be warning strikes in regional traffic around Hildesheim and Hameln/Bad Pyrmont as well as in Hoya, Verden, Zeven and the county of Bentheim. The corresponding negotiations are taking place here in a different collective bargaining round – but the content of the demands are similar to those for the public service.

Warning strike in Munich public transport on Thursday and Friday

12.06 p.m.: With a warning strike, the Verdi union wants to paralyze large parts of local public transport in Munich on Thursday and Friday. Affected are UB guess and trams. About half of the buses will also fail, as the Verdi union announced at a press conference on Tuesday. From the start of operations on Thursday to the end of operations on Friday, all employees of the Munich Transport Company (MVG) are called to go on warning strikes.

The MVG expects “significant restrictions on the subway, tram and bus”. Regulated operation will only be possible again on Saturday. However, it is planned to maintain at least part of the line operation.

In the case of the subways, line operation must first be completely stopped for safety reasons. Whether it can be resumed later depends on how many staff are available despite the warning strikes. With the buses, a thinned-out cycle is to be offered with the private cooperation partners.

He expects a high level of participation, said union secretary Franz Schütz. The frustration among the employees is great. According to Verdi, there is a separate in-house collective agreement for MVG employees in Munich, which is worse than the collective agreement for local public transport. The union calls for an adjustment here. In addition, she demands an increase of 10.5 percent in the collective bargaining, but at least 500 euros.

With the warning strike on Thursday and Friday, you are not only pursuing this goal, you are also demanding that politicians provide the necessary funding for public transport. The union sees massive deficits here that would have to be eliminated if the traffic turnaround is to succeed.

MVG boss Ingo Wortmann also emphasized the importance of the traffic turnaround. “The mobility industry is facing the greatest challenges of the past decades,” he said. There is a lack of solid and sustainable financing and staff. On these points one agrees with Verdi.

The action was announced by Verdi together with the climate activists from Fridays for Future, the organization is calling for a global climate strike on Friday. The Munich S-Bahn trains are not affected by the work stoppages, the operator is Deutsche Bahn. According to Verdi, explicit school buses will also not be affected.

Actions could also take place on Friday in other Bavarian cities with local public transport. Regarding the question of whether nationwide warning strikes are also planned for Friday, Verdi referred to further details from 1 p.m.

More information about the warning strikes can be found on the second page.