Stuttgart (dpa / lsw) - Train travelers in the southwest must be prepared for significant delays and sometimes train cancellations on Thursday morning. In the dispute with the SWEG Bahn Stuttgart GmbH (SBS), the Union of German Locomotive Drivers (GDL) has announced a warning strike for Thursday. According to the union, the work is to be stopped early Thursday between 3 a.m. and 11 a.m. The regional traffic of the Südwestdeutsche Landesverkehrs-GmbH (SWEG) and the SWEG Bahn Stuttgart GmbH (SBS), the former railway company Abellio Rail Baden-Württemberg, are affected.
During this period, disruptions on all lines in the rail traffic of the two companies are to be expected, as SWEG Bahn Stuttgart GmbH announced late Wednesday evening. Passengers should inform themselves before the journey.
The background to the strike is a dispute between GDL and SWEG. On Sunday, union boss Claus Weselsky had already threatened that strikes would be "pre-programmed" from Monday if the state-owned company was not willing to negotiate a uniform wage agreement for all its employees. A SWEG spokeswoman denied that on Monday, saying passengers could face strikes in the coming days if GDL maintained its "blockade stance".
So far, the company has categorically ruled out negotiating a uniform collective agreement for all of the group's approximately 1,800 employees. After all, the negotiations are only about a new set of rules for the subsidiary SWEG Bahn Stuttgart GmbH. This is the name of the former railway company Abellio Rail Baden-Württemberg, which SWEG took over for two years at the beginning of the year because of its financial problems.
Strikes at SWEG will affect passengers in several parts of the country. The company operates regional trains in the Ortenau and Breisgau regions, as well as the former Abellio regional lines between Stuttgart, Bruchsal and Heidelberg and between Tübingen and Heilbronn via the SWEG Bahn Stuttgart.
