AfD Kompakt, August 10, 2021.
The demands of the Union of German Locomotive Drivers [GDL]
have a realistic core. The adjustment to the inflation rate would threaten the
railroad men with a real loss of income should the GDL accept the compensation
contract, running until 2023 and negotiated by the DB [Deutsche Bahn, German Railways] company union, the EVG [Railway and Transport Union], which
foresees for 2022 an income increase of just 1.5 percent. If the GDL thus
argues for its members’ purchasing power, that cannot be rejected out of hand.
It is however indirectly about the efforts of the DB
management and the EVG company union to destroy a smaller industrial union [Spartengewerkschaft]. The means of
assistance for that is the single compensation law [Tarifeinhietsgesetz], enforced by the Labor Ministry which is lead
by the SPD. The personal associations of the SPD and the EVG are in that regard
no secret. The single compensation law apparently will be abused by the DB so
to end a competition between unions and to dry up an effective union, one
before all independent of employers. If the GDL thus sees itself forced to
struggle for its justification of existence with hard compensation demands,
that is understandable. The impending labor dispute is therefore also connected
with the single compensation law and is thus a direct consequence of the SPD’s
failed labor market policy.
It is not otherwise to understand that the DB has agreed
with the EVG to a special right of cancellation in its already concluded
compensation contract in case the GDL gets a better result. The DB management
has thereby brought the entire undertaking to a dangerous imbalance: The GDL
will be all but driven to a labor dispute so as to at all be able to further
substantiate a claim to represent. Should the GDL fail, the EVG would be the beneficiaries of the lost
labor dispute. Should the GDL be able to enforce a portion of its demands, the
EVG might obtain an identical compensation contract – the GDL would have then
hauled the proverbial potatoes out of the fire even for the EVG.
With all understanding for the position of the GDL, the AfD
Bundestag delegation once more appeals to its overriding responsibility, to
make possible for vacationers a train trip in
die Heimat. Labor dispute measures should therefore be initiated only after
the end of the summer holidays; that is, after September 13th. The time
till then should be used especially by the DB to submit an acceptable offer to
the GDL and defuse the fight over labor union existence.
[trans: tem]
