German unions on Thursday announced a 24-hour strike in the transport sector for next Monday, a stoppage that is expected to involve hundreds of thousands of workers and cause widespread disruption to air, rail and road traffic.
The unions announced the day of protest during a joint demonstration, at a time when employees from different sectors are calling for wage increases to deal with rising inflation.
The president of the Ver.di union, Frank Werneke, explained that he intends to mobilize around 120,000 workers for this strike, including security and ground workers at all German airports except Berlin, local transit workers at seven of the 16 states of Germany, port officials and road workers.
“This day of strike will have a big effect, we are aware of that. But it has to be,” Werneke said, adding that it was important to make clear the strength of the unions before the next round of negotiations.
The leader of the EVG union, Martin Burkert, said, in turn, that the organization intends to mobilize 230,000 workers of the main railway operator in Germany, the state-owned Deutsche Bahn, for the strike.
In reaction, Deutsche Bahn’s human resources director Martin Seiler called EVG’s strike “completely excessive, unnecessary and disproportionate.”
Ver.di is involved in a series of salary negotiations, mainly for federal and state government employees in Germany, where it is requesting salary increases of 10.5%, in addition to one-time payments of 2,500 euros.
EVG asks for a 12% increase, but Deutsche Bahn does not want to go beyond 5%.
The inflation rate in Germany accelerated to 8.7% last January.
Source: TSF
