Local transport in Germany stopped due to the strike everywhere except in Bavaria.
In Germany, the travel of millions of people came to a standstill on Friday when local transport came to a near complete halt due to a work stoppage. According to the trade union Verdi, around 90,000 workers from 130 companies were on strike.
City buses, local trains, trams and the metro stopped for a day in the whole country except for Bavaria. In the capital, Berlin, the strike was limited to seven hours and public transport started operating in the morning.
There was no strike in Bavaria because the negotiations between workers and employers were still in progress.
Regional and long-distance traffic of Deutsche Bahn, the German state railway company, was not affected by the strike. The drivers of these trains already went on strike last week.
Among other things, Verdi wants the working time to be reduced to 35 hours a week without affecting wages, in order to get more workers to the sector suffering from a serious labor shortage. The association also wants its members to have the right to annual leave.
Thursday was already a strike day in Germany, when the security inspectors’ strike canceled or delayed more than a thousand flights at the country’s airports. The strike in the aviation industry will also continue on Friday in Hamburg, where ground service workers will be absent from their workplace until midnight.
Hamburg Airport advises passengers to arrive on any flights with hand luggage only.
The ground service workers of the airline Lufthansa will probably go on strike next. According to Verdi’s representative, contract negotiations with Lufthansa have stalled badly, and a work stoppage may be ahead within a couple of weeks.
AP, Reuters, STT