Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

STRIKES

Karstadt stores hit by mass strike

Thousands of employees at one of Germany's largest retail chains went on strike on Friday. Shoppers should expect disruptions and even closures, the workers' union behind the action said.

Published: 25 October 2013 10:08 CEST
Karstadt stores hit by mass strike
Photo: DPA

By striking, staff at Karstadt are sending out a clear message “to their employers to think about providing their workforce with a stable future,” a spokeswoman from Verdi union, which organized the strikes, told The Local on Friday morning.

Branches in northern and western Germany will be affected, but the exact number of staff taking part was not clear, she said. Strikes will, in some places, run to Saturday.

Founded in 1881, the department store has suffered financial woe in recent years. It has been embroiled in a fight over wages for its 20,000 employees since November 2012.

Verdi has been pushing for a contract to give staff job security, and to get the company to commit to a set wage tariff. Nearly a year later, there has been little progression.

There will be discussions over the coming weeks, Verdi said in a statement put out on Friday morning.

Almost all branches in Berlin will be affected, with a gathering outside the store on the Kurfurstendamm shopping street.

Hamburg, Flensburg, Lübeck, Kiel, Duisburg, Essen, Bonn, Dortmund, Darmstadt, Bremen, Hannover are among the towns and cities affected.

READ MORE: Thousands of jobs to go at Karstadt and RWE

DPA/The Local/jcw

Follow us on Twitter @thelocalgermany

Like The Local Germany on Facebook

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

TRAVEL NEWS

German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

Germany's Deutsche Bahn rail operator and the GDL train drivers' union have reached a deal in a wage dispute that has caused months of crippling strikes in the country, the union said.

Published: 26 March 2024 09:55 CET
German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

“The German Train Drivers’ Union (GDL) and Deutsche Bahn have reached a wage agreement,” GDL said in a statement.

Further details will be announced in a press conference on Tuesday, the union said. A spokesman for Deutsche Bahn also confirmed that an agreement had been reached.

Train drivers have walked out six times since November, causing disruption for huge numbers of passengers.

The strikes have often lasted for several days and have also caused disruption to freight traffic, with the most recent walkout in mid-March.

In late January, rail traffic was paralysed for five days on the national network in one of the longest strikes in Deutsche Bahn’s history.

READ ALSO: Why are German train drivers launching more strike action?

Europe’s largest economy has faced industrial action for months as workers and management across multiple sectors wrestle over terms amid high inflation and weak business activity.

The strikes have exacerbated an already gloomy economic picture, with the German economy shrinking 0.3 percent across the whole of last year.

What we know about the new offer so far

Through the new agreement, there will be optional reduction of a work week to 36 hours at the start of 2027, 35.5 hours from 2028 and then 35 hours from 2029. For the last three stages, employees must notify their employer themselves if they wish to take advantage of the reduction steps.

However, they can also opt to work the same or more hours – up to 40 hours per week are possible in under the new “optional model”.

“One thing is clear: if you work more, you get more money,” said Deutsche Bahn spokesperson Martin Seiler. Accordingly, employees will receive 2.7 percent more pay for each additional or unchanged working hour.

According to Deutsche Bahn, other parts of the agreement included a pay increase of €420 per month in two stages, a tax and duty-free inflation adjustment bonus of €2,850 and a term of 26 months.

Growing pressure

Last year’s walkouts cost Deutsche Bahn some €200 million, according to estimates by the operator, which overall recorded a net loss for 2023 of €2.35 billion.

Germany has historically been among the countries in Europe where workers went on strike the least.

But since the end of 2022, the country has seen growing labour unrest, while real wages have fallen by four percent since the start of the war in Ukraine.

German airline Lufthansa is also locked in wage disputes with ground staff and cabin crew.

Several strikes have severely disrupted the group’s business in recent weeks and will weigh on first-quarter results, according to the group’s management.

Airport security staff have also staged several walkouts since January.

Some politicians have called for Germany to put in place rules to restrict critical infrastructure like rail transport from industrial action.

But Chancellor Olaf Scholz has rejected the calls, arguing that “the right to strike is written in the constitution… and that is a democratic right for which unions and workers have fought”.

The strikes have piled growing pressure on the coalition government between Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Greens and the pro-business FDP, which has scored dismally in recent opinion polls.

The far-right AfD has been enjoying a boost in popularity amid the unrest with elections in three key former East German states due to take place later this year.

SHOW COMMENTS