The German Rail Strike: The Italianization of
German Industrial Relations?
By Dr. Stephen Silvia

In Italy or France, a series of daylong strikes by a small group of workers straddling an economic chokepoint that cripples commerce and disrupts millions is to be expected. When the same thing happens in Germany, it begs explanation.

The strikes by Germany's rail engineers' trade union, the Gewerkschaft Deutscher Lokomotivführer (GDL), have caught many by surprise, including the Deutsche Bahn management. Why is this very un-German labor dispute happening? The GDL's militancy and obstinacy should be understood as an expression of desperation undertaken by a union leadership whose organization is isolated and teetering on the verge of irrelevance if not extinction. The GDL claims to have 34,000 members, but around half of these are retirees. It also asserts that three-quarters of Germany's train drivers are its members, although independent estimates place it closer to one-half. Nonetheless, the GDL has still generated enough solidarity to shut down Germany's rails. What does the GDL want? The union says it wants a 31 percent pay increase and its own contract. The demands are designed to help the GDL break out of an organizational death spiral. For years, the GDL bargained in coordination with its sister union, the Gewerkschaft Deutscher Bundesbahnbeamten und Anwärter (GDBA). Both are members of the small, staid civil servants' trade union confederation, the Deutscher Beamtenbund. In 2002, the GDBA broke with the GDL and began to cooperate with transnet, which is a much larger union with jurisdiction over the rails and an affiliate of the predominant Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (DGB) union confederation. The GDL and its two rivals have engaged in one-upmanship and membership poaching ever since; more often than not, the GDL has gotten the short end of the stick. The GDL now wants its own collective agreement and a spectacular pay-rise in order to increase its attractiveness to rail employees, and is willing to paralyze the entire German economy to get them.

Deutsche Bahn management finds itself in a difficult position. It does not want to abet the GDL in splintering the collective bargaining landscape because this would not only increase costs, but also reduce the enterprise's attractiveness right before a planned privatization. Deutsche Bahn first used the courts to contain the strike. Once that tactic failed, the company had no cards left. As a result, Deutsche Bahn's response to the GDL's dogged intransigence has been a combination of stunned disbelief and paralysis.

The engine drivers' successful industrial actions may serve as an example to others. A decade of trade union mergers has reduced the number of DGB affiliates to eight. These mammoth multi-sectoral organizations have left little room for employees in skilled occupations to have any influence over their own compensation and working conditions. As a result, small groups of skilled workers have increasingly been carving out space to advance their interests by breaking away from the large unions, forming new organizations, or transforming placid professional associations into genuine trade unions. Just in the past few years, air-traffic controllers, pilots, and doctors have all either threatened or actually engaged in industrial action.

This "Italianization" of German industrialization has its limits. The strategy of forming a small union of highly skilled employees can only succeed in a handful of critical junctures of the economy. Moreover, local grass-roots committees are permitted to call strikes in Italy, but German law forbids works councils from engaging in industrial action. Still, continuing dissatisfaction among skilled employees with the existing conglomerate DGB unions and the demonstration effect of the GDL's actions mean that in coming years Germany will likely experience more work stoppages akin to the current rail strike.

Dr. Stephen J. Silvia is an Associate Professor and Director of Doctoral Studies at the School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC. He is a member of the AICGS Advisory Council and the Board of the American Consortium on EU Studies. Dr. Silvia's research specializes in comparative industrial relations, labor markets, and social policy, with a focus on Germany, the European Union, and OECD countries.

This essay appeared in the November 14, 2007, AICGS Advisor.