German railway drivers continue their strike until at least Tuesday 7 September. Labor organisation GDL has also asked staff in maintenance and on stations to join the strike, although this had not yet led to work stoppages. On Thursday, Deutsche Bahn tried to object to a continuation of strikes through court, but that attempt failed. The railway company is appealing the ruling, but this has had no result so far.

“We were aware that the hurdles in summary proceedings are very high and that the right to strike in Germany is rightly very well protected”, said a spokeswoman for Deutsche Bahn. “Whatever the outcome will be, we have to try.” According to Deutsche Bahn, the strike is disproportionate. The company calls on train drivers’ union GDL to stop the actions.

Strike is due to wage dispute

The strike is the result of a wage dispute, which mainly concerns the timing and size of wage increases. In any case, the new offer from Deutsche Bahn included a corona bonus of 600 euros, something GDL had demanded. But the rest of the offer was insufficient, according to the union.

It is the third round of strikes in a short time that has brought train traffic in Germany to a standstill. “Train traffic to and from Germany is experiencing delays and train cancellations”, reported DB Cargo the Netherlands on Monday morning. Earlier reports were not much different.

Emplacement yard Kijfhoek

Rail freight carriers in the Netherlands have experienced double disturbance, as the main emplacement yard Kijfhoek was not functioning on full capacity last week. There were two cracks in the main rail brakes of the hill system. Due to this, the wagons had to be put in place via an alternative sorting method. This is very time consuming and halves the capacity of the hilling process.

This problem has now been resolved. The repair work on the two main rail brakes was completed last weekend. The automatic sorting process of wagons for the wagon load network was resumed on Sunday, infrastucture manahger ProRail has announced.