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GDL wants to put pressure on DB Group through a temporary work agency: a union subsidiary should loan engine drivers to the railway company. A bold plan does not guarantee success.
The industry’s next collective bargaining clash is already looming, despite recent cautious hopes that the EVG union and Deutsche Bahn will be able to reach an agreement in the next round of talks. Yesterday, the much smaller engine drivers’ union GDL put forward its demands for the upcoming collective bargaining with the DB Group in the autumn.
However, GDL’s highly unusual plans to hire locomotive drivers from railway companies in the future caused a stir. To this end, she has founded the “Fair Train eG” cooperative, which in the medium term intends to hire locomotive drivers on better terms and then hire them to the railway companies. “In the future, railway workers will gradually take control of their own destiny,” said GDL boss Klaus Wesselski.
Only GDL members can purchase shares in “Fair Train eG”. With this “groundbreaking idea for a railway market”, the unions themselves would indirectly become employers. According to Weselsky, this is a “challenge” for Deutsche Bahn.
First placement already in December?
Weselsky justified the plan primarily by the fact that railroad jobs had to be made more attractive given the shortage of personnel and skilled labor. “The goal of the cooperative is to provide skilled locomotive drivers and to let the resulting profits flow to the cooperative members themselves, rather than watching the DB AG board members enrich themselves,” GDL said.
If things go according to the union’s plan, the co-op should be up and running soon. A GDL spokesman said: “We assume we will have the first colleagues on the market before the December 2023 timetable change.”
First, however, the process of applying for a so-called temporary worker permit is still ongoing. The cooperative will then have to close the collective agreement with the GDL. “We will then address those colleagues who have expressed an interest in working for Fair Train eG in addition to acquiring shares in the co-op,” the spokesman said. “These will then be offered to interested railway companies in their areas of residence.”
critical size matters
Whether the bold plan will work is still completely unknown. A decisive factor in the success of the model will be whether the new co-op succeeds in recruiting enough of its own train drivers. They will have to give up their relatively safe jobs at DB and other rail companies and be willing to take the risk of a new business model.
Last but not least, the temp work model is based on the fact that employers often pay their “leaving” employees less than their permanent workforce – and they have the flexibility to use them. The Federal Labor Court recently confirmed the in principle lower wages, subject to collective agreements with temporary employment agencies.
Talk about “movement”: GDL boss Claus Weselsky.
For the GDL, however, it is difficult to imagine employees being employed at a level below the co-operative wage level, which itself should already be higher than that of the railways: “Because we also have to operate profitably as a co-op and of course we have to comply with the We have not yet entered into and must hold wage agreements and leases under such conditions are excluded,” a union spokesman said.
On the other hand, railroads will try not to pay casual workers more than permanent employees. Therefore, the question of how much bargaining power cooperatives can combine is even more important for the success of the model. Union schemes could benefit from the fact that qualified train drivers are rare. As an employer in direct competition with DB Group, GDL puts additional pressure on the company.
The smaller of GDL’s two competitors
Of the two railroad unions, the GDL is much smaller. It has nearly 40,000 members, compared with approximately 185,000 for the competing EVG. In only a few railway companies, especially private railway companies, the majority of union members are organized in the GDL.
The Collective Bargaining Law stipulates as follows: If there are multiple collective agreements for the same group of employees in a company, the agreement of the union with the largest number of members in the company shall apply. Thus, EVG is the stronger employee representative in Deutsche Bahn, while GDL is in private railways.
At Deutsche Bahn, 180,000 employees are currently paid under the EVG collective agreement, and fewer than 20 of the 71 rail companies with 8,000 employees use GDL contracts. As a smaller union, the GDL seeks to gain visibility and membership through often higher demands and a more confrontational tone.