An overplayed hand

The German train drivers' union GDL seems to want to spoil people's autumn holidays. Otherwise, it's inexplicable as to why they would choose this, of all weekends - when school vacations either just began or ended in nine states - for their strike.

The few trains that were running were only able to do so because Deutsche Bahn has a roster of older train drivers who are civil servants and thus not permitted to walk off the job. Even diehard advocates of liberalization and privatization find themselves thinking that the old days, when railway workers were direct employees of the state, weren't so bad after all.

I have nothing against train drivers. They provide an important service and have significant responsibilities. The same goes for the pilots in the Vereinigung Cockpit union or clinicians in the Marburger Bund. And the same goes for air traffic controllers, or flight attendants, or the switch-box operators working for the railroads. But what irritates me is that these small groups shamelessly exploit their key positions to achieve privileges that others do not enjoy.

One company, one union?

There was a time when Germany adhered to the principle, "one company, one union." Back then, we Germans watched pre-Thatcher England with amusement, and laughed whenever a boiler car was attached to an electric locomotive only because some obscure boiler-car workers' union demanded it.

"One company, one union" makes a lot of sense. It simplifies collective bargaining and leads to only moderate loss of production - if strikes occur in the first place.

But now Germany seems to be becoming the Strikers' Republic. Small groups have realized they can paralyze half the country with relatively few resources - and they've shown they're more than willing to do so, motivated by wholly selfish goals.

Airline pilots, for example, are defending a retirement age of 59 and lush transitional benefits with every means available. What other profession has such a package of privileges?

Beyond the impact on passengers, the pilots' increasingly frequent strikes have cost their employers about 70 million euros ($89 million) in losses every day of the walkout - a serious problem in an industry with chronically precarious finances.

An axe to the roots of collective bargaining

Specialist, profession-specific unions like those of the train drivers or airline pilots are, in my view, nothing more than vehicles for groups of selfish parasites. They drive wedges in the workforces of major industry unions and set axes chopping at the roots of collective bargaining.

It's ironic that a federal labor minister who is a card-carrying Social Democrat is now working on a bill to solve the problem and get the Strikers' Republic back on track. Train drivers and pilots have overplayed their hand and provoked legislators into reining them in. So far this year, there have been eight pilot strikes and five train strikes - and that's simply far too many for a highly mobile society like Germany.