Transnet, the biggest of three unions representing Deutsche Bahn's 130,000 workers, said if the company did not make its staff a more attractive deal when negotiations recommenced on Wednesday, it would call for temporary stoppages.

"If Deutsche Bahn does not make big concessions, we'll strike," Transnet boss Alexander Kirchner told hr-Info radio.

Talks between Deutsche Bahn and union representatives this week have failed so far. The GDL train drivers' union, which brought much German rail traffic to a standstill during strikes in 2007, said it would not strike before February.

GDL is seeking a 6.5 percent raise for some 12,000 drivers, while unions Transnet and GDBA want a 10 percent hike.

The head of GDL, Claus Weselsky, told reporters on Friday that the rail operator was planning to shorten working hours to compensate for a drop in demand linked to the financial crisis.

"We are talking concretely about shortening hours," he said. "We think it is legitimate to consider this step."

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German rail strikes likely

The JOURNAL of COMMERCE ONLINE: January 23, 2009
Bruce Barnard

Germany’s biggest rail union today threatened to strike next week if state railway Deutsche Bahn does not improve its wage offer.

The Transnet union issued the warning of temporary stoppages after a second round of wage negotiations with Deutsche Bahn on Thursday failed to narrow the gap between the two sides.

Strikes would immediately impact container traffic at Hamburg and Bremerhaven if Transnet targets freight services because rail accounts for over 30 percent of cargoes moving to and from Germany’s top box hubs. Hamburg is Europe’s biggest rail container port, handling around 200 freight trains each day.

The smaller, more militant locomotive engineers’ union GDL also rejected Deutsche Bahn’s revised wage offer, and said it, too, would call out its 12,000 members on strike. However, GDL said it would not strike before February.

The GDL union focused on freight traffic during protracted job actions in 2007 that seriously disrupted ocean container traffic, forced several factories to shut down and snapped supply chains in Europe’s biggest economy.

The GDL union is seeking a 6.5-percent wage increase, while Transnet and GDBA, which together represent 130,000 workers, want a 10-percent hike.

Deutsche Bahn is Europe’s biggest rail cargo carrier, running around 5,000 daily services in Germany, and owns rail freight firms across the continent, including in the Netherlands, Britain, Spain and Denmark.