Stuttgart (dpa/lsw) - The train drivers' union (GDL) started a strike lasting several days at the state-owned Südwestdeutsche Landesverkehrs-GmbH (SWEG) and its subsidiary SWEG Bahn Stuttgart GmbH (SBS) on Friday. Tobias Harms, the chairman of the management board, said the call for a strike had met with little response at SWEG. Problems are only to be expected on the Zollern-Alb railways. However, there are greater restrictions at the subsidiary SBS. So on the routes between Tübingen and Heilbronn or Stuttgart to Karlsruhe.
"We are very sorry for our passengers about the extremely short-term announcement by GDL," said Harms. The union had called on Thursday to stop work from Friday (2:00 a.m.) to Monday (2:00 a.m.).
The collective bargaining dispute is about the fact that the GDL would like to negotiate a collective agreement not only for SBS in the future, but for the entire SWEG group with its 1800 employees.
The SBS is the former Abellio Rail Baden-Württemberg. The Abellio daughter got into financial difficulties at the end of 2021. The company then took over the state-owned SWEG for an initial period of two years. The corresponding route network must then be put out to tender again. The SWEG supervisory board wants to decide on the submission of an offer next Saturday.
On Thursday, SWEG supervisory board chief Uwe Lahl declared that he did not want to make an offer for SBS at any price. "We don't want GDL in our parent company," says a letter from Lahl to GDL boss Claus Weselsky.
