Pak Sahafat – Verdi’s union announced mass strikes in many German states on Friday as a result of not reaching an agreement on wages for public service employees in the second round of negotiations with employers.
According to the report of the International group of Pak Sahafat news agency, quoted by “Tags Spiegel” newspaper, Germany’s Verdi union has announced plans to paralyze local public transport in several cities in several federal states with warning strikes on Friday.
The states of Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg, Saxony, Lower Saxony and Rhineland-Palatinate have been particularly affected by the strikes, the union announced in Berlin on Tuesday.
Actions are also planned in some cities such as Munich. The purpose of these strikes is to increase pressure on collective bargaining for the local and federal public sector.
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The warning strikes are scheduled to coincide with the global climate strike by the climate movement Fridays for Future this Friday. Christian Behle, the vice president of “Verdi” union, said: We’re going to combine World Climate Strike Day with Friday’s 200 Actions for the Future with warning strikes on local public transport. Traffic rotation will not be possible without investment in employees.
In negotiations for around 2.5 million federal and local employees, the Verdi union and the civil servants association dbb are demanding 10.5 percent more income, but at least 500 euros more a month. No agreement was reached in the second round of negotiations last week. The unions had rejected the employers’ offer as insufficient.
This proposal includes, among other things, a five percent salary increase in two stages and one-time payments of 2,500 euros in two years. Behle said: This is a slap in the face of employees.
A third and possibly decisive round of negotiations to resolve the wage dispute will be held March 27-29 in Potsdam. These negotiations have been accompanied by warning strikes in various cities for several weeks, including work stoppages in hospitals and garbage disposal.
At the beginning of the week, strikes by municipal workers also largely paralyzed the airports of Dusseldorf and Cologne/Bonn. Increasing work stoppages and strikes are expected until the third round of negotiations.