Striking bus drivers in Hesse, Germany: “The latest company offer is a joke”
By
Marianne Arens
20 January 2017
Some 2,500 bus drivers in the German state of Hesse have been on strike against highly exploitative conditions for the past 10 days. On Tuesday evening, the state association of bus companies (LHO) presented an offer that can only be interpreted as an insult.
On Wednesday, however, the bus drivers union, Verdi, decided to resume negotiations with the companies the following morning. Meanwhile the strike continues, “to keep pressure up during the negotiations,” as Verdi’s press office declared. It is obviously impossible for Verdi at this point to break the strike and send the drivers back to work.
The new offer was “just an insult”—this was the unanimous opinion of strikers on Wednesday. The LHO had originally proposed raising the basic wage from €12 (US$ 12.79) per hour to €12.65 in a series of steps. On Tuesday, LHO managing director Volker Tuchan offered an additional 35 cents, on condition that the final hourly wage of €13 come into effect only on January 1, 2019. The old contract expired seven months ago.
“This is no improvement at all. We haven’t been out in the cold for 10 days for this,” one bus driver in Frankfurt told WSWS reporters. “We can’t live on the wage they pay us. That has to change.” Bus workers in Giessen remain 100 percent behind the strike. “We will continue until we receive a reasonable offer,” one bus driver told the local newspaper.
The workers, who walked out against 20 private bus companies in Hesse, have received the support of other bus and tram drivers in the form of solidarity strikes. In Darmstadt, where drivers have been striking for eight days, an attempt by HEAG mobilo, a regional…