Berlin public transport strike

I dont think anyone has any sympathy for them now

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20080309/tbs-...om-5268574.html

At least it's looking like the S-bahn lines are going to be running normally tomorrow.

That is patently not true.
Oe of the reasons the employers are finding it hard to force a settlement on htier terms through is that there is a level of public support for strikers.

Yeah, I think there's still public support of ver.di.
The GDL had lost quite a bit of public support in this latest battle, from what I gather. (Even some other unions expressed frustration with the GDL.)

There is huge animosity towards the GDL from the leadership of the largest rail union Transnet, you are right.
That is one of the, if not the, key issue of the strike wave we have seen on DB in the last few months.

According to the s-bahn website, they have come to an agreement and will not be striking any longer. Back to riding the ring.

Didn't we have strikes last year that were settled?

To make things worse, hiring a car right now is extremely difficult. Luckily, when the striked last week, the AVIS on Kronenstr. had just received a shipment of brand new audis which became available to us after 20 minutes. Every other car hire place was fully sold out.

Not that AVIS isn't the worst rental service I've used before, but if there's nothing else you might want to try them if you're in a tough situation with transport. We also checked out a very small, unknown place on Leipzigerstr. called Autoherbstautovermietung which also had a smart car or two available.. There's a sushi place attached to it.

Is the U-Bahn working again? The BVG website appears to say (or maybe this is just my poor German) that some U-Bahn lines are running, albeit only every 10mins, yet the station at Bundesplatz is still shut. They also appear to have given up saying that the strike will end on Friday. I guess that now means it will continue until they reach some resolution.

There are buses running between some stations but no U Bahn. Yep it is now an open end strike and apparently they haven't even made an appointment to sit down and talk!

Brilliant. I wonder if this has all been organised by the Taxi driver's union...

The announcement on the BVG website is that the BVG has added more frequent buses to the replacement transport plan.
As for taxi drivers, they're probably the only group that benefits from a strike.

... And on that note, anyone up for a trip this weekend to another country... for supplies?!!??

ROTFLOL. Kind of pathetic when it's easier to get around in another nation than your own living location.

Oh - and what do you want to bet that they keep it up through at least Easter Weekend - so that in essence, they got two weeks "off work" without having their vacation time docked? Yeah... I'd sure like to be able to do that too...

Last time I was in Berlin, there were always shops within walking distance.

If people went on strike so often just for time off work, there would be strikes more often but they are in fact extremely rare.

Rare? Ive only lived here 3mnths & this is 'my' second strike!!

They actually are rare. There have been many years where there were no strikes.

Oh Good Lord.. I was teasing about the supplies thing...

And to me, this isn't Rare - Rare is once every 10 or 20 years - kind of like lightening strikes... Irregular is more like it.

They may not get their vacation time docked while on strike, but I don't believe they get paid by their employer during that time either. The union provides some sort of replacement pay, but striking is not a monetary/vacation windfall...

I read in the Tagesspiegel that the strike would be continuing through Easter...

I'd suggest you go and look for the statistics for numbers of full on strike day of public trnsport workers since 1945.
I've certainly had dozens or scores more times my public transport journey messed up for other reasons than strikes.

My neighbour told me that is how it's looking... I hope not. I arrived in Berlin a few days before the strike began and it's been terrible - i'm anxious enough about living in a new city, but without the safety net of being able to hop on the underground home... I'm not going to whine, it's an inconvenience. The company must be loosing a hell of a lot of money, it seems unthinkable that a city the size of Berlin could go without it's underground network for such a long period...

HAHA! I must have looked like such a tourist today while I sat along Prenzlauer Allee waiting for the M2. I just got back, had no knowledge of this, but as I scanned the street it occurred to me that the looks I was getting had nothing to do with how cool my new scarf is.

That's fantastic. At least I'm getting a chuckle out of something to do with the strike... What isn't funny is the amount of elderly people I've seen riding rusty old bikes in the stormy weather. I was walking back from the S-Bahn last night and some people were really struggling, the rain was piercing!

Ah, so...it was meant to end today...will it...? (please say it's so...)

I can understand tourists are pissed... especially if ur here for the we, and u dont really know how to get around without the ubahn!
but seems like Berliners (not expats) are really cool with the strike! they understand and show sympathy with strikers! nice lesson for all of u frenchies
also, a "berlin paradox": the traffic in some eastern parts of the city is even better off without those trams!
ride a bike!
cheers

Indeed.
Toytown functions partly as a bosses' forum for precious expats.
They are quite in favour of a "more market economy" until their OWN benefits are under threat.

i am actually starting to feel a tad pissed off.
when is it going to end? :/

Why do you keep posting your tedious, myopic, dumbed-down Marxist rhetoric on a Berlin thread that doesn't concern you?. There are a hell of a lot of people here who are unhappy and who have suffered from the strike...how about the BVG workers who aren't union members and have been forced to take unpaid holidays, the kiosk workers in the Ubahn stations and nearby business owners who have lost customers and traffic, the sick and elderly who have trouble getting to doctors' appointments...

Just because a majority of people are principally in favour of higher wages for BVG workers does not mean everyone is A-OK with this ongoing strike. I'm sure most of those people who say they don't mind it are those who haven't been hugely impacted. There are plenty who have been impacted and maybe you don't hear as many of their voices because they are not out and about getting polled by the media, or net-savvy enough to post on forums. And fyi, there are lots and lots of "precious expats" (and natives) in Berlin surviving on less than what a bus driver earns. Berlin is not Munich!!!

@fruitlassie

They are talking today and all are hopeful. They could call off the strike tomorrow so keep an eye on the news.

I could consider myself a 'precious expat' - I think extremely highly of my desires, and of those close to me. Most of the Berlin Toytown members that I have met are intelligent, persevering, hard working people with goals. From the time I have spent in Berlin, I can attest - this is not a popular mindset, especially among the self-doubting, (practically self-loathing) locals who can barely crack a smile on their birthdays. I am not persecuting or defending anyone, but your apparent intolerance of the discerning attitudes shown by those who care to speak out for change alarms me.

I have a colleague whose father is in hospital in Berlin. Dying.
His mother is suffering becasue she can't get to the hospital to visit her dying husband.

And he still supports the strikers.

When you live in a household that relies on Hartz IV for income, you don't need a lectures on low incomes thanks.

It is in the inerest of the low paid that strikers, be it in at BVG, DB or local authorities generally, win.
They are fighting back against the brutal sprial of declining real wages that we have all seen in Germany over the last few years and success for them will have an influence on real wages for all working people. Solidarity is good in itself of course, but there is soome self-interest there as well for working people to stick together.

wouldn't she find a way to get to the hospital if she really wanted to see him?

According to page 3 of this link, real wages were up in Germany by 2.8% between 2000 and early 2006:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/comparl/econ...10/fitoussi.pdf

MT, where is your source to back up your claim of a "brutal spiral of declining real wages", which sounds like a more apt decription of the situation in Zimbabwe than in Germany?

So are we supposed to think your colleague is noble for putting the interests of the strikers ahead of his dying family member? Sorry, but if that was me, I would care less about the "strikers position" and more about my dying dad.

Nobility has nothing to do with it. If I choose to sympathize with a worker who sacrificed 3+ years of their life choosing to do higher education so they could earn a higher paying wage, who all of the sudden cannot get to the job that pays said wage, then so be it.

Or how about I ride my bike to work everyday since I live close enough to my job that it doesn't make an impact, so I don't rely on it for everyday life, and yet I still don't support the strikers.

I guess I'm a callous ex-pat looking after my self-interests.

Staat zahlt Billiglöhne - Tausende auf Hartz IV angewiesen

FEELING THE PINCH

U Bahn,buses and trams mostly back to normal Monday!

http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/0,1518,541699,00.html

And I have a colleague whose sister's hairdresser's brother's wife can't get to the hospital to visit her dying husband as she is on Hartz IV and can't afford a taxi and is not very happy about the strike indeed. Honestly

Real Wages development in Germany:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reallohn

What is interesting is the argument that was just raised above about someone who has spent X years in further and higher education and can't get a job / pay rise or is in a lower paying job than striking transport workers. It was mentioned before on this thread and the EXACT same argument came up on another board I post on when there were strikes on the London Underground.

On the one hand people moan about promotion or pay based on length of service etc.
But at the same time there is a sense of entitlement to higher pay based simply on the fact that they have studied.

What has happened over the last 20-30 odd year or so is a massive expansion of further and higher education in western industrialised societies.
But after the time and expense involved there aren't any guarantees of a mega paying job and career that were held out to us.
What the system needed / needs is a well educated workforce.
Some people might wear a shirt and tie and pretend we are all middle class now but you are still a worker, working for a wage.

And people who (probably justifiably) feel they haven't got what they deserve or worked for are easily pushed to argue against those who do more obviously proletarian work when they try and defend their pay and conditions.

I have to say that my interactions with Berliners is that they are NOT behind the strikers. I could care less as long as the S-Bahn is still running in Berlin. That was the long shot the strikers were hoping for, both the BVG and the S-Bahn going on strike, but that didn't pan out, and Berliners have a decent S-Bahn link which still makes the city reachable..without too much walking. I am against the strike. Unskilled laborers whining for more money, let the serfs in the field play with their mud.

Perhaps you noticed that real wages are almost exactly the same in 2006 as they were in 1998! Using 1991 as the beginning of the time series is misleading. Anyone familiar with the topic knows that in the early 1990s, real wages rose unsustainably as part of the short-lived post-reunification boom, thus fueling the very inflation which ended it and caused real wages to fall modestly to restore competitiveness to the German economy. The again, Marxists don't care for reality, only demagoguery.

More stats on real wages from that well know revolutionary journal Zeit who use got the data from a mad anarcho marxist organisation called the Statistisches Bundesamt:

http://blog.zeit.de/herdentrieb/wp-content...duktivitaet.gif

Any chance of the discussion heading back in the Berlin direction?

The return to service on Monday is a 'Good Will' guesture by Ver.di and the issues are still not resolved. I wouldn't rush out and buy a new monthly travelcard just yet

Berlin is in a particular bind becasue the city is broke.
IIRC, Berlin has lost court cases to try and get more federal funding.

There is an antipathy from the South towards paying more money to Berlin.
My Berlin colleague is infuriated by what he sees as the selfishness of Bavaria and BW who he says were nothing but poor farmers till they got subsidies to expand.

Oh right. So things are a bit difficult here as not only are all the people skint but the local government is too. Good to know. Thanks for clearing that one up

You've chosen a graph that plots real wages against change in labor productivity, yet neither you nor the unions use productivity increases as the benchmark for determining what you say wages should be (you use inflation). As for the graph from 1971, in many years, the increase in real wages exceeded the increase in labor productivity, and real wages increased in the vast majority of years! Not only that, but ask yourself what the effect of reunification would be on German labor markets, i.e., the entry of millions of additional workers followed by a shutdown of polluting industries in the former DDR? Disinflation in real wages. It took a few years, but with the fall in real wages by 1998, it's pretty clear that is what happened.

Just curious, MT, but do you now agree with me that firm productivity should be the basis for wage increases? Or do you continue to tie your demands to inflation?

This isn't a new edition of the Conq v Monks Town show cos it bores the other posters to tears and I have other plans for my saturday evening.
Across the board the purchasing power of earned incomes has fallen recently in real terms and when asked to back up the assertion with evidence I have done so.

The latest information on what service BVG can offer on Monday is now on their website. They are hoping to run a full service on the U Bahn at least every 10 minutes. Services may be restricted, however, as BVG support workers (mechanics, admin people) are still on strike. Similar problems may affect the bus routes and also the tram although private buses will still continue to be used to minimize any shortfall due to essential repairs etc.

It is reported that no consensus has been reached yet on either the level of the proposed pay increase or how this increase should be split between BVG employees who are on old or new contracts (Alt- und Neubeschäftigten). Needless to say, the individuals on old contracts (who earn substantially more than those on the new contracts) are demanding the same pay increase.

Berlin has a pattern of wasting money. Case in point, the city/state is spending €20M on the 'Be Berlin' campaign. And hundreds of millions to rebuild a palace.

Whilst far from being a fetischist for stalinism, I'm also not in favour of huge sums going to replace "Erichs Lampenladen" with a re-build of a Junker palace in central Berlin. Best speak to the CDU on that one though.

Cities worldwide get slated for spending money on promoting themselves.
Just from friends and aquaintances though it seems a long weekend in Berlin is getting more popular than a long weekend in London.
Perhaps it is money well invested?