German train strike could cost €1 billion
First a three-day strike at the beginning of January, now an unprecedented six-day strike: German train drivers' actions will hit companies, ports and consumers alike. But what are the actual consequences?
Huh, sounds like it would have been cheaper to meet the train drivers with a decent wage offer.
Firstly, the main issue isn't money it's working hours.
But even if it were only about money, it wouldn't really work like that. The strike costs Germany about a billion in GDP. But only a fraction of that is paid for by Deutsche Bahn (the railway company). The losses mostly stem from people and goods becoming less mobile. Deutsche Bahn only loses some income from tickets which is nowhere near that much.
In the end allowing strikes in critical infrastructure isn't a good idea. Germany has a pretty good solution for that, it's about making people "Beamte"/officers. These are a special sort of civil servant that will essentially get court martialed for striking but Beamte are also practically unfirable and the constitution (and if it comes to it, the courts) ensures that they get adequate wages.
When Deutsche Bahn was an institution instead of a private company owned by the state Deutsche Bahn employees were (almost?) all Beamte. Some older ones still are (as I said, they can't be fired) and that's one of the reasons why some trains are still running. We need to get back to that or at least some rules that mimic the approach.
Beamte can effectively strike, too. It's called Dienst nach Vorschrift (duty by the letter).
They follow every regulation to the letter, which grinds everything to a halt, and there's hardly anything anyone can do about it since they're unfirable.
To counter that, the state just pays them well enough so they don't need to strike.
Or at least make them an offer you can actually discuss about instead of trying to defraud them.
And potentially cause growing class consciousness? Never, better not give those dirty labourers anything worthwhile.
But it's easier to go to the big media outlets and tell the workers "We have to be prepared to work harder and harder again" and "You also have to sweat", like the bosses of the biggest German bank, Bosch and our finance minister did.
(source)
I believe the liberals are really afraid of a wave of people realizing that working less for the same amount of money is an option. When the train drivers get their 35 hour work week without any pay cuts, there will be more people also taking a liking to that idea. Worst nightmare of the upper class.
Or any offer, that wasnt just to then go "oh look, they are AT fault, they didnt accept" ... If you look at the actual offer youll see that they were totally in the right to decline
Can someone calculate? I would be curious, but I'm also lazy.
It's not that easy to calculate, especially since the 1 billion is about GDP losses, not losses in ticket sales.
I'm also lazy, but I'm willing to bet that the company loses less than 400M. After all the billion is for total costs is alreay on the high end. There are estiomates for a round a third. The unions demands amount to some 10k in costs per member (that's not what they'd get in hourly wage increases, but what the changes would cost). The union has some 40k members. So we'd be talking about some extra 4 billion. I.e. they'd have to strike for months to make it worth it. Now, not all those members are active, but if they get too much the other (bigger) union will demand more and so on.
For the country it's a vastly different story. If this were paid for by taxes and increasing GDP were the goal you'd most definitley not budge even slightly on the union's main demand (shorter working hours) since there's already a shortage in that area, but there'd be much more generious offers regarding wages. I.e. something like not a cent more for anyone working under 37 hours, but 50% more for people working 40+.
The 7h workday is worth it
I’d just like to give a quick reminder that many if not all of the workers rights achievements we enjoy across the EU are a direct result of unions and strikes in the past. Without them we wouldn’t be were we are today. You’re not gifted anything in work life.
Peanuts compared to the costs what removing all working ppl there and setting up A.I. train drivers (as FDP minister Christian Lindner mentioned lately)
cost whom?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The wage dispute between Germany's state-owned rail operator Deutsche Bahn (DB) and the train drivers' union GDL is entering the next round.
This time, passenger transport will be affected from Wednesday morning (January 24 from 2 a.m. CET) until Monday evening, making it almost six days — and thus the longest strike in the history of the railroads in Germany.
Commerzbank Chief Economist Jörg Krämer estimates the strike will reduce value creation in just the transport sector by €30 million per day, which corresponds to 0.3% of daily gross domestic product.
Its reputation was already suffering severely due to repeated technical failures, an extremely decrepit railway network and continuing infrastructure problems, he said.
As far as several dangerous goods used in the chemical industry are concerned, rail transport is even required by law because of the reduced risk of accidents on trains.
Even in the absence of a strike, it wouldn't be unusual for a freight train to be delayed for a day, he added, so the industry had certain buffers and had set up storehouses for emergencies.
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