The Bahn Strike Breaker?

For a number of months, this Bahn strike thing with the GDL union has been a continual episode. It never quiet made sense to me.

There were three things on the table.  The GDL guys wanted some hours cut off the standard week.  The Bahn came across the table and offered some reduction.  Both sides were fairly close....even when you go back to fall of 2014 on this topic.  The GDL guys wanted a pay raise, and the Bahn met the number while in discussions early on.  So, we come to the third item....the GDL guys wanted to incorporate the support staff into their union and have them participate as the GDL union.  For some reason which never made sense.....this went nowhere.  The Bahn organization weren't going to talk expansion.

For each single strike....the expansion thing was the trigger.  Nine strikes.....all going back to no expansion.  It's odd and never made any sense to me why GDL made this such a big deal.  The news media kept quiet and the political folks kept their mouth shut.

So today, the little comes out.  This Friday.....the Bundestag will meet and are expected to pass a new law related to unions.  The law says (if passed as is).....if you have an industry which has to deal with more than one single union....then you only have to deal with the LARGEST union....NOT all of the unions.  One single contract is all that matters, and it leads only to the bigger of the unions.

If GDL had accomplished the inclusion deal.....they'd be the bigger of the unions.  They failed.

The law?  It's been going through various layers of the Bundestag for months.  The various political parties knew it.....the news media knew it.....and the GDL folks knew it.

Presently, GDL is NOT the largest union player with the Bahn folks.  If the Bahn had agreed to this deal.....bringing the support staff onto the GDL union.....GDL would be the bigger of unions dealing with the Bahn.  Presently.....there is a bigger union with other functions related to the Bahn.  Once the law passes.....GDL isn't really much of a player anymore.

Shocking?  Yeah.  The news media basically kept quiet and never uttered a word about this.  Now, everything falls into place.

GDL will wake on Monday to find some court order facing them....ordering them back to work.  The court system might delay the new law because GDL says it's unfair.....but the court will simply say they will review the law, but until they finish reviewing it.....continue on working instead of striking. One single contract with one single union.....basically changes the whole concept of strikes now in Germany.

This brings me to the odd feature of German news media.  There had to be at least a hundred journalists within the news media who knew of the law coming up and the impact on GDL.  They basically sat there and said nothing.  If the public had known of the whole game.....it would have very negative against GDL.  Somehow.....this was the game to be played out, for whatever reason.