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Complete (almost) Shutdown of Berlin Train System - could ithappen here...??
Am 30.12.2011 19:08, schrieb Neil Williams:
That is what is happening in the Thatcherized Britain, but not in Germany. TUPE is not Thatcherite, quite the opposite. I know, having the franchise changes in the railways is one thing her politics could not smash. Is there no German equivalent? Yes, the issue is called "Betriebsübergang", and BGB (Civil code) paragraph 613a describes the rights of workers under such a change. The english translation of BGB gives "Rights and duties in the case of transfer of business" as the title of that section: http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_bgb/englisch_bgb.html#p2428 But the German rulers have conceived the tendering of transit operations more to the way you would chose your paperhanger or construction company or the janitor or office cleaning company: you call another service provider who brings his own personnel and tools and machinery. In the case of railway operations, bringing their own engineers, locomotives and other rolling stock, guards, etc etc. (There are some exceptions, where the Land or the designated public transit authority is the owner of the rolling stock, in order to "facilite competition"). To the difference of the British rail privatization, this does very well allow to drive wages down. I guess the German capitalist politicians have also thought of this when they decided their way of railway privatisation: maintaining the DB AG as a "national champion" who could become an international "player" (today effectively the 200 pound gorilla in the European transport market), while introducing a tendering system which allows upstarts to win market share from the "incumbent" mainly by paying lower wages, and by this token putting pressure on the wages at DB and other (former) public transport companies. A number of municipal transit companies (e.g. the Frankfurt/Main one, the one of Berlin, and others) have set up a low wage bus company where bus drivers are paid 30% less than the ones employed directly according to the old public sector collective bargaining contracts. To add insult to injury, in most cases Social-Democrats and trade union burocrats have voted for such moves, in order to "save the public company" which would otherwise lose out completely to the private competitors from Veolia etc with their lower wage bus drivers. Cheers, L.W. |
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