Strikes by train drivers continue in Germany Deutsche Bahn affiliated with the GDL union. For weeks the small union, which had already paralyzed the country between 2007 and 2008, has been holding thousands of passengers hostage, causing delays and cancellations. This is the longest strike in the history of the Federal Republic.
The battle of the GDL does not seem to have as its objective only an improvement in the pay treatment of the train drivers, but it seems motivated by the desire to acquire greater power within the vast network of trade unions existing in Deutsche Bahn, still state-controlled railway giant.
Precisely to prevent small fringes of trade unionists, especially among doctors and pilots, as well as train drivers, from keeping the nation in check, politics has been thinking for some time about approving new rules to limit the right to strike. Among these is also that of the forty-four year old social democrat Andrea Nahles, Minister of Labor and Social Policies in the grand coalition government led by Angela Merkel.
The idea, not new, but elaborated a few years ago by the Christian Democrat Reinhard Göhner, is to guarantee that the strike can only be called to the union with the most members. The proposal is included in a broader bill, which will be brought to the attention of the German Parliament starting in December, and which concerns collective bargaining in companies.
Since contractual fragmentation and differentiation in German companies has meant that workers and employees belonging to different trade unions and non-unions enjoy different contractual conditions over the last ten years, the government is about to counterattack and impose the principle of bargaining unit (Tarifeinheit). Therefore, if only one union, the one with the most members (certified by a notary), will have the right to sit at the negotiating table, that union alone will also be able to call a strike.
The business confederations like the idea, but also the confederal union DGB, which brings together eight acronyms that are the majority in almost all sectors, both in the public and in the private sector. The minor trade unions, on the other hand, have already announced an appeal to the Federal Constitutional Court for violation of the trade union freedom recognized by the Basic Law.
