Germany: Deutsche Bahn proposes switch to 35-hour week with an ‘options-based’ model

GDL, Germany’s train drivers’ union, which has around 40,000 members, including drivers and other train crew staff, and represents almost 50% of Deutsche Bahn’s 20,000 train drivers, has succeeded in imposing its central demand in this current round of collective bargaining: namely, a reduction in the working week from 38 hours at present to 35, with no reduction in pay. This change will be effected in several stages up to 2029, however. The novelty of the arrangement is that these stages...