As of: February 29, 2024, 2:44 p.m
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Buses from the Cologne transport company KVB are in the depot.
© Oliver Berg/dpa
Millions of people in North Rhine-Westphalia had to find an alternative way to get to work or school.
Verdi has started a two-day warning strike in local public transport that will continue on Friday.
Düsseldorf - The two-day warning strike in around 30 municipal transport companies in North Rhine-Westphalia is expected to lead to significant restrictions for millions of people this Friday.
Already on Thursday, trams and subways remained in depots in many places.
Experience has shown that only a small proportion of public buses run in the strike regions and are operated by private subcontractors.
The Verdi NRW union has called for the work stoppages.
In several regions, union representatives reported high strike participation among employees on Thursday morning.
Almost all large municipal local transport companies in North Rhine-Westphalia such as KVB (Cologne), Rheinbahn (Düsseldorf), DSW21 (Dortmund), the municipal utilities of Münster and moBiel (Bielefeld) are on strike again.
According to Verdi, the approximately 48-hour warning strike in municipal transport companies ends on Friday evening or Saturday night with the end of the respective shift.
According to ADAC North Rhine-Westphalia, the local transport warning strike had a greater impact in the inner city than on the NRW motorways, where there were more than 200 kilometers of traffic jams between 7:30 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. at peak.
But that's not an unusual amount for a Thursday morning.
The Cologne motorway ring was severely affected.
Traffic jam hotspots in the Ruhr area were the A40 and the A3 between Duisburg and Oberhausen.
On the access roads to major cities, for example in Cologne and Düsseldorf, there were many delays of usually five to 15 minutes, sometimes even longer.
This week, Verdi launched a wave of warning strikes in local transport almost nationwide, with the main strike day being March 1st.
Verdi NRW explained that on this day they wanted to set an example together with Fridays for Future to demand more money for local transport.
A climate-friendly transport transition can only be implemented with better working conditions and more staff.
Fridays for Future has, among other things, called for rallies and demonstrations in several NRW cities this Friday.
Several hundred KVB employees are expected to take part in a rally in Cologne, a spokesman said.
At the beginning and mid-February, local public transport in the most populous federal state was largely paralyzed by two one-day warning strikes.
As with the previous warning strikes, a major exception is the Aachen transport company ASEAG, which has an in-house collective agreement.
Some other companies did not go on strike either.
The municipal transport companies provide information on the Internet and apps and also point out that rail traffic on the RE, RB and S-Bahn lines is not affected.
The background to the renewed warning strikes in North Rhine-Westphalia is collective bargaining over the working conditions of around 30,000 employees in municipal transport companies.
Two rounds of negotiations on the general collective agreement remained without results.
The third round of negotiations is scheduled for March 11th and 12th.
Among other things, Verdi is calling for additional days off to relieve the burden on employees and make the jobs more attractive.
There is a dramatic labor shortage.
Buses and trains were canceled every day in all tariff areas because there were not enough staff.
Verdi has started a wave of warning strikes in local transport almost nationwide.
In the collective bargaining dispute at the state level, the employers' association KAV NRW pointed out that there was limited financial scope and that salaries would rise significantly on March 1st, as agreed a long time ago.
Given the shortage of drivers, additional days off would mean that the remaining drivers would be put under more strain.
The association was optimistic that it would be able to agree on an “overall package” in the third round of collective bargaining.
dpa