Last night, I watched a short news segment on ZDF (Channel Two, public TV in Germany), and the topic was.....the German railway folks (the Bahn) under threat to lay off 10,000 employees.
So this goes back to the virus business, and a major cut in passenger traffic over the past two months.
It's the union talking about this....NOT the Bahn management folks. But the management folks are the ones talking to the government about additional funding to survive this period.
The real question? How long will it take to convince people to ride the rails and return to some period of normal operations?
I'm one of those people with the 50-percent off Bahn-card....meaning I can book a day-trip for half-off. But my interest in using the railway system in this period? Virtually zero. In fact, I can't see any reason to ride the train system for the remainder of 2020. The card is basically worthless to me.
Hundreds of thousands of Germans are in the same mind-set.
As for the 10,000 number? Well, here's the one critical thing to think about.....there are around 205k employees for the Bahn within Germany. You can figure on a yearly basis....at least 5,000 individuals retire. So you could easily walk in and offer some early retirement deal and the pain of cutting 10,000 wouldn't be a harsh thing.
As for lesser traffic? If you are operating 'trips' with 700-passenger trains leaving out of Hamburg, and only 250 people onboard....you are wasting time and assets. It might make sense to cut 10-percent of the traffic for a period of six to twelve months.
Bottom line? It's just another piece of the German economy affected by the virus.
No comments:
Post a Comment