November 11, 2024

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Germany: Coach motorists union leader turns union into a non permanent work agency

Germany: Coach motorists union leader turns union into a non permanent work agency

On January 23 the German Teach Drivers’ Union (GDL) launched a cooperative identified as Good Train e.G. The first 7 users of the cooperative involve the head of the GDL, Claus Weselsky, and his designated successor, Mario Reiss. The cooperative is a temporary work company that is to “lend” prepare drivers to rail transportation providers.

The GDL wants to “set new expectations,” Weselsky defined on June 5. The project was introduced that day collectively with the union’s wage needs at a GDL normal assembly, and then introduced to the media in Berlin. The GDL claims that with Truthful Teach it has “founded a corporation that provides reasonable ailments when it will come to choosing out locomotive drivers.” Weselsky enthused to his associates that the “centuries-outdated model of cooperatives” would resolve all their difficulties.

GDL chief Weselsky and placing practice drivers at Berlin’s Ostbahnhof in 2021 [Photo: WSWS]

In point, the opposite is the scenario. The cooperative is a lure and each individual prepare driver should be aware of it. It marks a new stage in the transformation of trade unions into resources of the significant organizations and into companies exploiting the workers themselves.

By location up its personal short-term function company, the GDL is maneuvering its customers into a unsafe scenario. The latter are expected to resign from the governing administration-owned Deutsche Bahn (German Rail) and other firms, and place many years of social gains at threat in get to sign on with the recently founded Truthful Coach. A capitalist manager, Peter Bosse, who has been head of human assets at many firms for 22 many years, most not long ago at the insolvent Abellio Rail NRW and Vias Rail, has been appointed CEO.

In watch of the latest extraordinary deficiency of staff members, the GDL claims it will lend train drivers to the railway corporations on greater phrases than they are at the moment utilized. But this is an totally naive calculation. Who will spend for instruction, ill pay out, company pensions and—in the case of motorists who have attained civil services status—government pensions? What happens when educate motorists are dismissed by the rail firms? As momentary employees they can’t declare proper protection against dismissal and Truthful Train will not be ready to continue on paying their salaries for long.

Good Prepare also wants to make a financial gain, Weselsky emphasised. “Not only are we opening a firm, but it will really swiftly work economically to make gains for the benefit of all.”

Considering that it is a cooperative, the income will be dispersed to users. But right before that happens, operating costs, a enormous bureaucratic apparatus and the board salaries of Truthful Train have to be financed, which, based on encounter, will not be modest. The loaned-out practice motorists will get only a fraction of what the rail corporations pay Truthful Practice for its services.

Good Teach also has to compete in the capitalist industry versus rough competitiveness from staff businesses like MEV and rail corporations that have been in the organization for years and can draw on in depth global means. Good Prepare is explicitly fully commited to the capitalist sector overall economy. On its web-site, it cites “free-industry action” as its first principle—i.e., right before “fair wages” and “socially satisfactory doing work disorders.”

In an job interview with Tilo Jung as portion of his “Young and Naive” structure, Weselsky replied in the adhering to manner to a concern about Karl Marx: “We’re not in a class war, we’re in a marketplace economic system.” Once again and once more Weselsky pressured the significance of creating gains. “A business enterprise that does not make a financial gain is not a business.”