There is currently a risk that the booked connection by air and/or rail will be canceled if you want to travel to, from or within Germany. The way in which various modes of transport are being paralyzed, recently increasingly at the same time, is met with increasing criticism and incomprehension.

It is probably the case that trade unions and their members have the legally enshrined right to enter into industrial action. However, there seems to be very little willingness to compromise among train drivers, for example, so attempts are being made to enforce the maximum demands. However, it should also be borne in mind that the various railway reforms have meant that train drivers who joined from a certain date in the 1990s are no longer civil servants. The salaries are significantly lower than those offered in Austria or Switzerland, for example.

This means that German train drivers are definitely open to job offers abroad, because the differences in earnings are enormous. As a reminder: Under railway boss Mehdorn, Deutsche Bahn AG, which emerged from the GDR authorities Deutsche Bundesbahn and Deutsche Reichsbahn, was supposed to be made “fit for the stock market”. This also included the side effect that new entrants were employed under private law on significantly worse terms. There was also insufficient investment in the infrastructure. The consequences are well known, because many train stations are not particularly attractive places and the dilapidated rail network is a guarantee for delays.

Mistakes that were decided and then committed at the beginning of the 1990s are now being carried out on the backs of passengers. It's not just about the wage dispute with the train drivers, but also about the fact that Deutsche Bahn was simply run down for a long time in order to make a profit. They also felt they had to play “global player” and bought into heavily loss-making companies abroad. A large sum of millions was wasted in Malta because they were completely incapable of reliably operating scheduled services there. Apparently it was completely unknown to the managers at the time that articulated buses, which have already caused fires in London, are probably the most impossible solution in the hot Maltese climate, combined with narrow, steep, winding and narrow roads.

Security checks: The state caused the misery

At least a similar picture can be seen in aviation. The wage dispute between the representatives of the security staff and the subcontractors who, for example, are responsible for identity checks on behalf of the Federal Police, is not new. This conflict has been simmering for several years.

It was a very long time ago, but security checks, which according to German law are a sovereign activity, used to be carried out by the Federal Border Guard and therefore by an executive authority. Real officials were involved in the tasks. At some point it was believed that it would be much cheaper if this was “privatized”. With the exception of Frankfurt am Main and Berlin-Brandenburg airports, which have received authorization to organize their own operations, security checks are always carried out on behalf of an authority. At most German airports, the client is the Federal Police, and occasionally also the responsible regional council. It is put out to tender and the lowest bidder gets the contract.

This is exactly where the problem lies, because the security companies are not paid particularly generously by the state and so it is obvious that they are trying to save on wage costs. If the lowest bidder principle were not applied, but rather the best bidder principle applied, or if the state employed the security staff itself, the current problems might not even exist. There would simply be more financial flexibility on the employer side. In other words: The state certainly did not trigger the current tariff dispute, but it at least contributed significantly to the current misery through its focus on cheap, cheap, cheap.

Lufthansa has had many strikes since Spohr took office

For decades, the Lufthansa Group was not only considered a good employer, but also a place where top wages were paid. This reputation continues to have an impact on the general population to this day, even though the Kranich Group regularly confronts employee representatives with the arrival of Carsten Spohr as CEO and sometimes even accepts that strikes will bring flight operations to a standstill for days. This applies not only to the German flight operations, but also to the subsidiaries in Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and other countries.

Of course, there have been tariff disputes in the past, but not in the current form that passengers can no longer trust that their connection could be canceled due to a strike that is called again. At the moment - apart from Swiss - one has to expect that a strike could be called at short notice at one of the Lufthansa Group airlines.

It is now standard practice for Lufthansa to take legal action against strikes and/or works meetings. With a single exception, in which the pilots' union VC made a formal error, they were defeated in every single case. Nevertheless, people complain. In the interests of the passengers, it would probably make more sense to sit down at a table and negotiate constructively.

Willingness to compromise is required

Of course, unions always want to get the most out of their members and employers want to offer as little as possible in order to save costs. That has always been the case, but social partnership in practice means making compromises and then somewhere in the middle agreeing on something that is acceptable to both sides. But the Lufthansa Group is very far from that in many different areas of the company.

If it were just a group of employees, one could assume that they are not getting the job done. But that is not the case at all, because in Germany alone it concerns pilots, flight attendants, ground staff and various other employee groups. The case of Discover Airlines is also noteworthy, where, according to the Cockpit association, the management allegedly refused to conclude a collective agreement. But that may have been exactly the purpose of the new company, because without a collective agreement it is cheaper to fly than if you were subject to the group collective agreement. City Airlines, the most recent new company, also currently does not have a collective agreement, so disputes are likely to arise here sooner or later.

Unfortunately, the people who actually suffer in the tariff conflicts in German transport are the passengers. The fact that the Lufthansa Group was once again able to achieve a quasi-monopoly position in domestic German traffic is particularly a disadvantage if “purely by chance” the train drivers also call for a strike at the same time. The winner? Flixbus and car rental companies, because if you really have to travel and can't use your own car, you have little choice on such strike days.