Berlin public transport strike

What this everyone seems to think unions are a bad thing Europe it the free an fair continent it is today cos of unions. yeah sure sometimes they go over board but they do a hell of a lot more good then bad. get a bike. cycle. The strike will be over soon.

People strike because there not happy about there work conditions, employers try and keep down wages down but there comes a point it just snaps an well it just not worth doing the job for that money.

We cant all be p.h.d doctorates and business men there is noting wrong with driving a bus or a train or a what not if it pays. They not being selfish they what to work but the conditions have been eroded in the last few years.

The former inhabitants of the Berliner Stadtschloß, Margraves of Brandenburg, Kings of Prussia and German Emperors can hardly be called Junker ... a (long outdated) predicate used for untitled German nobility

Haarspalter!

Not in favour of an expensive re-build of a the titled nobilitys' palace then, as an act of hypocritical political revenge from the CDU.

oh another point here productivity and real wages . Real wages have fallen enormously in Germany since the wall fell if the BVG was EBAY or BMW. Yes you could have an argument of more productivity but how do you get buses and U-Bahn to be more productive. Run less of them how about the making them longer. Like in Britain and Ireland. Where the public infrastructure has gone to pot and every train is packed to the gills all the time. Maybe you cut back on the 1 am trains and forget about late night buses and trains then Berlin in at the stoke of a pen becomes just like every other backwater city where public transport shuts down at 11 (naming no names)

I am not 100% about Berlin but from reading at the time when the "TopBus" project happenend in Munich, I think it has happened.
Bus and tram routes and timetabling and the shift patterns of transport workers have been optimised over the last few years.
To increase the productivity of the indivdual workers and the vehicles.

An operator can save money by cutting frequencies and cutting late night services etc.
The question is whether there is a will do so and whether than it itself could start a useage spiral away from public transport.

The Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) forms the largest parliamentary group with 223 seats, followed by the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) with 222 seats. The Free Democratic Party (FDP) parliamentary group holds 61 seats, The Left Party parliamentary group 53 and the Alliance 90/The Greens parliamentary group 51.

383 of the 589 MPs present voted for the reconstruction of the Berliner Schloß ...

I ain't in favour of most of them sozialabbau twunts either innit!
Mit wenig Ausnahmen, in einem sack, knüppel drüber und du triffts die richtigen!

<holds back so as not to go over the quota again>

I do think the building Berliner Stadtschloß, is more about removing the ugly but a symbol of the communist past of East Germanys then about building or restoring a castle in the middle of Berlin I'd be happy if the just finished either ripping up "the Palast der Republik"and built 4 empty walls Disney land style so it matches the rest of the square and low a behold what did find on wikipedia.

"of the According to this, three façades of the palace will be rebuilt, but the interior will be a modern one. Work on the Humboldtforum, as the new palace will be called, will begin in 2010. Off-site stonemasonry has already commenced."

Fore my 2 pence worth.I think a fully restored Berliner Stadtschloß is a bad idea maybe the main portaco and the front and sides with a small museum but Berlin would be best served with a innovative business incubator site. A science park or a college like hyper island in Sweden.A practical college not the airy,fairy never going to get a job stuff a real college no soft subjects, a M.I.T or a Buckley failing that they could just put a very pretty shopping mall in the middle of with a few amt offices round the side in a a sort of lego container city skelation structure and change it as they see you see fit Even fill it in with a few blocks of apartments.Its space in a city centre fill it.

What you see is what you get:

A royal palace - rebuilt by the citizens of Berlin - boasting a beautiful baroque-style facade incorporating the famous Schlüterhof and, of course,the "Kings Lodgings" in the Renaissance-part of the building at the Spree-site. This latter part will be converted into a first class hotel. The financing for this project is coming exclusively from the private sector.

The castle/palace is planned to be the biggest (tourist) attraction in Berlin, with a wide range of quality shops, restaurants and even a Business Centre. Around the Eosanderhof area there will be museums and special event rooms. Overall, the building will boast an aura of opulence and style that will be the envy of Germany.

"private money will make this dream come true" is what is written at the very top of the site you showed me.

so why is so much public money going into it.

Well ... the "Nutzungskonzept" has changed

It was very nice to ride around on buses and the U-Bahn today as my parents are here visiting! Does anyone know if this was just a one-day show of good will or if we will be lucky enough to have these services going any more this week?

Here you are : http://www.spiegel.de/international/german...,541883,00.html

Looks like they're threatening to strike again from April 1, according to http://www.bvg.de/:

Good to know that after they took 'time out' to earn their overtime bonuses over the Easter holidays the good employees of BVG are now back at 'work'. Very public spirited of them

agghg! disaster.

I was listening to this on the news earlier.
Who will be on strike BVG or the S bahn and co? I got confused cos both were mentioned and i couldnt figure it out.

The S Bahn should be running.

Don't forget that especially the busses and the trams will have to be home in bed by midnight so all services will slowly grind to a halt before midnight.

oh no!!!oh please let the s-bahnen not strike!!! is it for sure that they don´t strike like last time?

okay...i called s-bahn now and they (s-bahn) will go for sure. the man at the phone said that it´s still not decided jet if they(bvg) strike or not and they (s-bahn)still waits for their proper sign of bvg...as so far it´s just in the media but not really decided. it will be like last time and bvg will provide busses. ( basicly that they don´t have to give they money back to te costumers). this strike will have no timelimit again and they probably still only want to finish this when verdi acts after their agreements.
it´s not so bad for me as i only take the s-bahn...but still> i think they really start to exaggerate now!
s-bahn will provide extra trains as well to be able to transtport all of the more customers. he said> it will be chaos again...

no strike anymore
http://www.berlinonline.de/berliner-zeitun...aft/737354.html

oh! such a great info! thank you!

Well I found out the hard way early this morning at about 2:30ish that the BVG is striking. There isn't any info on it online yet, but it is out of service. At least you don't have to find out the hard way on a cold rainy night about an hour walking distance from home.

FFS only the trams are on strike, lucky I thought I would get off at my usual S Bahn stop to see if the U Bahn was running or I would have had to walk to work.

Yup it is only the trams on strike, according to the BVG website: they started the strike this morning at 3:00am without any warning.

how nice of them, there was no info when I looked at 6am.

Looks like it's not over yet...
http://www.bz-berlin.de/BZ/berlin/2008/04/...eo=4302606.html

The sticking point of this dispute now seems to be the staff on the old contracts. Despite getting over 3000 Euros per month for a 36 hour working week with pretty much total job security, they still want 80% of the pay offer for the much lower paid employees on the new contract. Charming.

Berlin does not want to pay that and has said so quite bluntly.

Well at least it's only the workshops on strike from tomorrow, at the moment.