[ad_1]
Warning strikes in the public service hit Berlin and Brandenburg hard: Verdi’s union also wants to strike the BVG on Tuesday. From 3 am to 12 pm, all buses, trams and subways must be stopped. After that, experience has shown that it takes several hours for everything to go back to plan. In Brandenburg there is even a full-day strike.
According to a message from Verdi, not only the transport companies of Potsdam, Cottbus, Frankfurt (Oder) and Brandenburg / Havel are affected in Brandenburg from Tuesday morning until Wednesday at 3 am, but also the transport companies in Dahme-Spreewald, Uckermark, Teltow-Fläming, Oder-Spree, Barnim and DB Regio Nord-Ost. According to a railway spokeswoman, the latter only applies to some bus routes: DB Regio’s rail traffic is not affected.
Verdi justifies the announcement of the strike with the “incomprehensible blocking attitude of the employers” in the ongoing negotiations, in which it is about uniform framework conditions at the national level such as allowances, the right to leave and the promotion of talent young. In Berlin, Verdi calls for weekly working hours to be reduced from 39 to 36.5 hours with full pay.
[Wenn Sie alle aktuellen Nachrichten live auf Ihr Handy haben wollen, empfehlen wir Ihnen unsere runderneuerte App, die Sie hier für Apple- und Android-Geräte herunterladen können.]
With around 14,600 employees, BVG is the largest municipal transport company in Germany. Last year more than one billion passengers were counted, that is, about 2.9 million per day. Due to the crown crisis, the number of passengers is still below the level of previous years, but the load factor has recently increased again.
In the event of a strike, this can become an infection risk if people crowd into fewer vehicles or have to use the S-Bahn as an alternative. In previous strikes, it regularly reached its capacity limits.
S-Bahn mobilizes all vehicle reservations
S-Bahn staff as a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn will not participate in the warning strike. A spokeswoman for the railroad said all available vehicles will be on the road Tuesday. However, reserves are known to be scarce. The chaos of traffic threatens the streets.
The last time BVG employees went on strike was in the spring of 2019. The series of warning strikes ended just under a week with a settlement on at least eight percent more wages, higher Christmas bonuses, as well as improvements in assignments and categorization of collective bargaining. Newer employees, in particular, saw themselves at a great disadvantage compared to those who had been with the company for a long time. There has been a lot of criticism of warning strikes that sometimes last all day because of their scope.
The current negotiations were postponed according to information from the Local Employers Association (KAV) after Verdi’s surprising national strike announcement broke into ongoing negotiations on Friday. KAV CEO Anke Stier criticized the strike announcement in light of the strong growth last year and because of “unnecessary risk to passenger health.” Negotiations are due to start again on October 13.
Both the BVG and the state lack a lot of money due to Corona
Due to the crown crisis, transport companies are losing hundreds of millions of euros in revenue. The BVG is particularly affected by the large proportion of tourists in Berlin. According to information from Tagesspiegel, around 100 million euros are expected to be lost by the end of the year. This corresponds almost exactly to the annual volume of improvements agreed in spring 2019.
Find ways to overcome the online strike
No increase in ticket revenue is in sight given the increasing number of infections across much of Europe. At the same time, the municipalities as owners, the BVG is a public law institution, that is, a company that belongs directly to the state, they must face massive tax losses.
Berlin-based Fahrgastverband Igeb criticized on Friday that the BVG did not have a concept in the drawer for cases like the impending warning strike in order to sensibly coordinate the 10 percent of bus traffic in the suburbs that is outsourced to outside companies. As it stands, some neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city will be completely cut off from local traffic on Tuesday.
Anyone who can and wants to plan their trips around Berlin without BVG can do so online by deactivating the tram, bus and metro modes in the search field. And if you opt for a bike as an alternative, the weather forecast shows you have a good chance of getting dry on Tuesday.
