Sehr ungeehrte GDL, (strong language warning)

Sehr ungeehrte GDL, Fuck you.

Your members are constantly striking at times when the country faces massive lay-offs and job losses, when everyone else would be happy just to sure of a job to go to next Monday. You constantly complain about poor pay. You constantly make demands that those of us who studied longer and worked harder in order to achieve more would never dream of making. It was your choice, whether good or bad, to do the job you do.

Union jobs, unlike ours, are a lot safer. More of your jobs -- especially those of GDL members -- are safe from outsourcing than are ours. You may not make as much money as you'd like but that was your choice. You have job security in driving that bus and fighting the fire. My job could be moved to the Philippines in May. Nobody's waiting for the fire truck to arrive from Bangalore.

The money you want isn't there, and it's not there because of you. The constant threat of strikes and the increasing pay demands all drive the cost of the rest of us so high that companies turn to outsourcing wherever they can. The result is that we -- the people who pay for your services -- aren't earning enough to, in fact, pay for those services. There's less money, you idiots, not more. And every time you pull this bullshit there's that much less again. Who is going to open a branch office in a country that costs four times as much money and in which they can't even be certain their extremely expensive employees can even get to the damned office?

Some years ago I was in the damned DGB office when you were striking for more money and fewer hours. Remember the picture of a smiling sun with a "38" logo? You were striking for more money and only 38-hour work weeks and the union had already printed the newer version of that poster demanding only 35 hours. Meanwhile I work at least 41.3 hours a week and have to think about some mook in Romania taking over my job queue in a couple months as I walk two kilometers to get to the goddamned office because you whose jobs aren't going anywhere refuse to work.

You're the ones who are, at the heart of it all, responsible for all the job losses by driving up prices and causing instability. Between you and the Betriebs-rats which destroy competitiveness by removing such "anti-social" ideas like merit pay, this country is doomed. There's labour and materials for 1/4 of our price just to our east as well as massive unemployment there which makes it very easy to find staff. They're getting EU subsidies which we're paying in order to compete with us and take even more of our industry away. This despite the fact that almost 20 years later we still haven't been able to take care of our own after the Reunification. Every time you strike you make Eastern Europe look that much more attractive.

Fuck you. Get your asses back to work and be glad your job can't be done for lower net costs by someone in Malaysia.

woof.

P.S. When you strike, things get even more unfair: I get to work from home. For full pay. Until I lose my job to outsourcing because of your greed.

What a load of ruling class rubbish!

Good post BD. Totally agree. Fuck you GDL.

I fully agree too. Although the strong language is unnecessary.

Amen Brother Dog. Great post.

What an exceptionally unpleasant post. While sharing some of the sentiments, if this is in any way symptomatic of a general level of private sector communication skills it's perhaps unsurprising that jobs are outsourced or offshored!

What were you expecting? Mills & Boons?
This should be translated into German and projected on the Rathaus.

So please someone tell me what does the GDL have to do with firefighters and bus drivers? Oh and I like my fireman and police officers to be paid well, thank you very much.

I thought the pay deal was agreed, and the up and coming waste of time is all about how long certain body bits are. I for one have changed travel plans for next week accordingly. Sixt *hearts* GDL.

What exactly is it that he's ruling, Herr Marx?

With an instructional graph explaining micro & macroeconomics

The pay deal was agreed.

But as far as I understand it, DB are demanding that GDL agree to joint negotiations with Transnet in future and GDL reject that.

So we all have to change our plans next week because Herr Shell or whatever his name is has a small wiennie?

You want unpleasant? How about ver.di laying Munich lame for a week in 2001 just as stock markets worldwide were crashing and Germany suffered more than half a million job losses? Their demands: More money, fewer hours, job safety guarantees for more than a decade. Is that less unpleasant than a few "fuck you"s hurled in anger and disgust?

OK, How about IG Metall striking in 2003 (or was it 2004) and causing what would've been less than 10% reductions to full-blown plant removals to Asia? Is that less unpleasant?

Are continued demands for more money from companies which are going broke less unpleasant, with foot-shooting threats to take actions which would drive the companies completely under or away? The unions are wholly unrealistic with their demands, and every time they do this they further injure the long-term economic health of this country, meaning there'll be even less money coming in to pay for those pensions they're already striking about because they've been reduced.

woof.

Here is some basic online instruction in economics for the benefit of MT: Free Economics Textbooks

There's a role sometimes for the "free" market to play and there's times where it isn't appropriate.

In a funny way, the train drivers are using market leverage: If you don't pay the asking price, you don't get the goods.

I could not agree more with this post, strong language included.

With that reasoning, MT, you run the risk that a substitute product (nonunion labor) can be supplied in place of the recalcitrant union labor that stubbornly refuses to supply its services.

So do you want the market, or not, MT?

Good post, Herr Doggie. But hey, it looks like this outsourcing stuff is scaring the crap outta you and giving you nightmares. If you have the real potential, you will never lose your job. So, dont worry!

What annoys me s that it is now do what we say or we strike. They have the pay deal. All that DB is now insisting on is a legitimate wish to not have to deal with 25 unions every fortnight, but a coordinated approach to wage settlements.

This argument came up before in the last round of DB strikes Conq.

If DB sacked ALL the train drivers tomorrow it would a ) have to recruit new ones and wouldn't be able to continue to run its services and b ) when the workforce was back up to an operational level the inherent conflict would re-occur at some point in the future. Employers want to hold wages down, employees want them to go up. It's an ongoing process.

Since their wages are beneath them, perhaps the GDLers can open a German subsidiary of this company:
http://www.wellredusa.com/tshirts.asp

Probably too capitalistic for them, eh? The "Strike Just Do It" T-Shirts seem appropriate, though.

So you think they hold an invincible monopoly on the labor supply of train drivers? Interesting thing that, but if it were so, wouldn't that be a restraint of trade on the part of the union?

Oh, I disagree - I think the strong language serves to get the point across how pissed off we all are with this fucking strikes!!! I have to travel 1.5 hours a day each way as it is, and it drives me nuts when this is further extended by these greedy bastards striking!

Why doesn't the government step in??? This is costing the country millions every time these arsewipes strike! :-(

There is no monopoly on labour, it isn't controlled by the GDL.
But a completely new workforce in DB would unionise itself very quickly and in a few years tops, we would be back at EXACTLY the situation we are now.

Because that is what the Union wants.

Maybe, but at a minimum a credible threat of being replaced would moderate their behavior. After all, what do you think the job prospects are for German train drivers if they cannot work in Germany as train drivers? Long-term and structural unemployment is much worse than wage moderation...

I agree with bad doggie. Im sick of strikes and strikers in this country. Mrs Thatcher and Norman Tebbit, please come out of retirement and over here and sort this country out!
"Trades unions do not create jobs, but they do destroy jobs - and they inhibit jobs". N.T 1980s.

Ive had more than enough of Betriebsrats, Beamten, Gewerkschaften and Kirchen! Clean this country out please, preferably before I leave.

German rail workers have been very moderate in their behaviour for years, which is why the current period of industrial unrest is so shocking.

You are right Rick that what the employers are trying to do is Thatcherism.
And looked at what a fucked up society the UK is as a result.

Check enterprise. They're running 50% off right now.

BD, can you add a P.S. to Mehdorn as he's refusing to show his weenie but gets paid from our taxes as well.
Cheers!

MT, are you better off today than you were in 1979?

I mean to forbid further strikes...

You try getting a job driving a choo-choo-train and see if that job isn't:
1) completely under the control of the union when it comes to hours, pay and advancement
2) denied to you because you won't pay to be a member

I'm stuck with the corporate version of this incompetence: the Betriebsrat. Same shit, different costume. Because of them I can't get merit pay increases, I can't make deals with management about my hours, and if a round of layoffs comes, they'll prevent management sacking the shitheel across from me who actually works three hours a week because it would be "unsocial" even if his wife has a high-paying job. They'd force management to dump me because I'm single.

I can't think of a single net-positive thing a union has done since I first started using oxygen.
Update: I can think of one beneficial union. Just one: the UFCW.

woof.

Business so who cares! *grins* The scummy GDL arschlöcher können sich mal...

@Hydro, totaly agree. This strike shouldn't be allowed legaly as it is about nothing more than a company trying to run its business the best way. It has nothing to do with wages, working hours or anything else.

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/artikel/372/161925/

UK was pretty fcked up prior to Thatch. She got things moving. I can remember the Callaghan years - when as Mrs T put it, "the dead went unburied, flying pickets and bully boy unions ruled". Germany seems to me to be increasingly like Britain under Callaghan. Useless wishy wash coalition politicians, abdication of responsibility, Reform blocking by "Interessensständen", ever high taxes and deductions, failure to bite bullets and do the necessary. As a result you end up with a country in a long slow drawn out death.

This is not America ...

Great Railroad Strike of 1877

Callahagn was actually starting to do what Thatcher continued with.
The unions fought back under a Labour government becasue workers were getting shat on by social democrats in government.

Now where else is that happening right now...

No they did what they did because the law disproportionatly protected them from the consequences of their actions. Flying pickets, secondary striking, unionised closed shops. Alll thankfully brushed aside by our lady. I fully support thre DB managements right to insist on a predictable plannable wage structure. Anybody would think these union people knew how to run a business.

Now this thread needs more of this...

Well certainly not here. They all do very nicely.

One other apt quote from Norman T. "My father didnt strike (or riot) - he got on his bike and looked for work, and he didnt stop until he found it".

GDL is no way to run a railroad!

Isn't there a post of the month or year on TT? I think BD's post has at least one nomination for that

I wish to correct the previous statement I made in which I said I could think of no good that any union has done in my lifetime. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) in the US has worked to protect its members who perform their jobs under appalling conditions with little to no corporate concern for safety, be it in a meatpacking house, grocery store or restaurant.

woof.

I remember that - those were bad times!

I wish Bad Doggie would be invited to give lectures like this at Germany's high schools. Economic literaracy in this country is very low, textbooks for kids warn of the evils of capitalism, the German public is sympathetic with the strikers. Discussing such matters with my fellow Germans and voicing my pro-market sentiments earns reactions like admitting a Waffen-SS membership.

Hence I am thankful that at least on Toytown the language of economics is understood.

German labour law and its related institutions such as Betriebsrat and Gewerkschaften are to blame for Germany's two-tier labour market with insiders and outsiders. Insiders in union-protected jobs enjoy security, long holidays, perks and whatnot. Outsiders such as new graduates, women, foreigners, free-lancers and whoever does not conform to the German stereotype have to put up with limited contracts, Praktikantenvertraege, Zeitarbeit (temp work) and low pay - or no job at all! Often these persons are more flexible, more ambitious and much better qualified than the lazy bastards in their Festanstellung, governmental or large corp, it is not much difference.

Needless to say, this is a huge market inefficiency, incompetence is rewarded and talent is driven away. This does not bode well for this country's future.

For the GDL and Deutsche Bahn it needs to be added that Mehdorn and Suckale (the Personalvorstand lady) did a crappy job as well - their HR management is not worth mentioning. If they had done their homework 5 years ago we would not have the problems we are having now. This however does not excuse the behavior of the GDL.

BD, how about making a podcast of your post??

Suckale - is that really her name?! Or should that be Suck-all... Either way the whole thing sucks.

Yep, and you need a Thatcher or a Tebbit - and not a Callaghan-Merkel - to sort such things out.

Re Zeitarbeit. What makes me laugh is how in Berlin you see (or used to see) defaced temp agency poster ads on the u-bahn with "Zeitarbeit ist sklaverei" scrawled over them. What a fantasy world these people live in.

Funny thing about claiming Zeitarbeit is "slavery"- non-EUers aren't allowed to do Zeitarbeit! So firms often get lousy temps and thus can't expand their businesses. I'll bet there are plenty of non-EUers already resident in Germany that would be glad to do Zeitarbeit.

One nobel economics laureate seems to think that most of the German unions are just "salary levelling machines". His view that human beings are irrational and only interested in their own prevalence would seem to be well grounded in this particular thread.

I don't do podcasts and I don't have time to regularly rant on about the idiocy of economic thought in this country. I'd be happy to engage in a debate with one or more Germans on the subject, though due to time constraints, a written debate would be better. You might enjoy this. Sadly it doesn't have much meat on a story of great significance about the collective mentality when it comes to entitlements which hasn't changed here since the Industrial Revolution. Oligarchies aren't just tolerated but are encouraged, and the people are likewise encouraged to maintain their station. Entrepreneurship was never encouraged in this country and to this day is punished considerably more than rewarded.

woof.

Zeitarbeit is rapidly expanding where as the number of full contracted jobs is falling.

The original concept of Zeitarbeit was to allow firms to smooth out the peaks of the business cycle.
But increasingly Zeitarbeiter make up a higher and higher proportion of people working in a firm.
It is used as a stick to beat workers with and to hold down wages and the grafitti artist in Berlin obviously recognises that.