Last Monday, it was clear that the 34,000 members of Germany's GDL train driver's union had voted for an open-ended strike. The entire country assumed that the labor conflict would begin on the next day. But GDL officials decided to wait and allowed Tuesday to pass without striking.

GDL Chairman Claus Weselsky, 52, still had appointments to get to in Berlin on that day. He also had to be back in his office in Frankfurt by Wednesday to interview lawyers, because the GDL is urgently in need of a legal expert.

If the train drivers had stopped working on Tuesday, Weselsky would have been a victim of his own strike and would not have made it out of Berlin in time for his Wednesday appointments, a situation he was determined to avert. As a result, GDL did not shut down rail transportation until Wednesday, initially on freight routes and a short time later on passenger routes. By this point Weselsky had reached his goal, in two respects: He could keep his appointments with the lawyers he will soon need, and he showed the country, once again, what his small trade union is capable of.

80 Percent of Rail Traffic Disrupted

Only 800 striking train drivers were enough to massively impair about 80 percent of rail traffic throughout the entire country last week. In freight traffic, important shipments did not reach factories or only arrived after delays, and in passenger traffic commuter trains were completely shut down in many regions. Even after the end of the first day of the strike, delays continued to drag on for hours in some cases. Will the strike now result in a train chaos that could last weeks?

Once again, the small train drivers' union is holding millions of people hostage to achieve its goals. It has approved open-ended strikes, knowing full well that they could harm the entire German economy. "Free collective bargaining is an important value, but it cannot turn into egoism on the part of a sector union," says German Transportation Minister Peter Ramsauer, a member of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU). "With its strikes, GDL is dealing a particularly hard blow against Deutsche Bahn, which really isn't the main target of its demands, and therefore must essentially serve as a hostage."

The GDL has staged a strike against Deutsche Bahn once before, when it tried to assert its own collective bargaining agreement for train drivers about four years ago. At the time, the spectacle dragged on for almost a year, with numerous disruptions in service on Germany's government-owned national railway.

Government Considers Action

This time it could get even worse, not in terms of the length but the severity of the dispute. That's because the GDL is taking an even more aggressive stance this time around. The initial situation is more complicated. Besides, there is also a political dimension to the current dispute. The coalition government in Berlin is discussing the issue of whether it should continue to tolerate small professional groups pursuing their particular interests to such a massive degree that all of Germany, and not just the targeted employer, suffers as a result.

In contrast to 2007, this time GDL isn't just taking on Deutsche Bahn (DB), but also the 25 other railway companies that are its competitors. Weselsky wants all 26,000 train drivers in Germany to be compensated under the same collective bargaining agreement that the GDL concluded with Deutsche Bahn in 2008. Both the private railway companies and 17 DB subsidiaries that were spun off to be able to compete with them pay their drivers substantially lower salaries -- up to 30 percent lower in some regions -- than Deutsche Bahn does.

In addition to uniform payment, the union also wants a five-percent pay hike, which is why Deutsche Bahn is also being included in the strike, even though DB and all private railway companies, following an arbitration process, signed a sector collective bargaining agreement on Feb. 14 that provides for virtually uniform compensation and a pay increase for all commuter rail employees. However, this agreement was not negotiated by the GDL but by the Railway and Transport Union (EVG).

The two unions are sworn enemies. Weselsky is determined not to accept the EVG agreement, because it still permits a 6.5-percent wage gap between DB and private railway companies. Besides, only 10 percent of all train drivers are organized in the EVG, whereas about 80 percent are members of Weselky's GDL. "I'm not about to allow the weak EVG to dictate the wages of my train drivers," says Weselsky.

Irreconcilable Positions?

Thanks to his union's tough approach in the last strike, a large number of EVG members switched to GDL, and now Weselsky wants to prove to them that the move was worthwhile.

The other side is just as irreconcilable. In contrast to its response four years ago, Deutsche Bahn is not about to give in to the pressure of the strikes this time. "It was already a mistake last time. If we give in again this time, it will ruin our position in collective bargaining policy once and for all," says a member of the negotiating team on the employers' side. "We certainly can't submit to the demands of a small group of crazed employees who are not open to any arguments at all."

Union leader Weselsky hopes to anger customers with the impact massive strikes will have on public life. To increase the pressure, he is also staging a strike against freight operators. "He hopes that the heads of Volkswagen, ThyssenKrupp and Daimler will complain to the chancellor," says a DB negotiator.

The last time this happened, the government urged the DB leadership to give in. But that won't work this time around, say railway officials. They note that they brought politicians on board early in the process and have kept them updated on the status of negotiations and their own offers.

Weselsky is not to be deterred. Even if only one of the participating companies refuses to accept his collective bargaining agreement, "we will continue striking until the very last one of them has signed the document."

A Hierarchical Union Oriented Towards Its Leader

Weselsky, a native of the eastern German state of Saxony who sports a large moustache, apparently has his union tightly under control. GDL is organized in a strictly hierarchical fashion and oriented toward Weselsky.

In addition to the current pay dispute, the GDL head is also pursuing a completely different agenda. He wants to prevent the principle of plurality in collective bargaining agreements practiced in Germany from being outlawed. The principle of uniformity in collective agreements, under which only one prevailing collective bargaining agreement can exist within one company, has existed in Germany for more than 50 years. In reality, however, this has protected the wage setting cartel consisting of the key members of the German Federation of Trade Unions (DGB) and the employers' associations against attack from newly established unions for decades.

Last June, however, the judges on Germany's Federal Labor Court ruled in favor of a complaint by two doctors organized in the Marburger Bund, Germany's largest medical trade union, and summarily revoked the principle of uniformity in collective agreements. Under the court's decision, more than one collective bargaining agreement can now apply within a single company. The ruling substantially bolsters the position of sector unions like GDL, the Marburger Bund and the pilots' union Cockpit, because these organizations now have the right to strike for their interests. Even if collective bargaining agreements are still in effect barring the rest of the workforce from striking, the smaller unions can still walk the picket line.

A Demonstration of Power

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government, however, is now looking into ways to legally restrict this plurality. Weselsky intends to use his strike to demonstrate his power, so "that politicians will no longer dare to eliminate a strong union like ours, while strengthening other unions with organization levels of barely 20 percent."

It's a highly risky strategy. Instead of strengthening the GDL, it could in fact end up weakening the union and other sector unions like it. The government, responding to pressure from citizens irritated and outraged by a strike, could even decide to push for new legislation that would make the principle of "one business, one collective bargaining agreement" official -- as both the DGB and the Confederation of German Employers' Associations (BDA) are demanding.

The German subsidiary of French railway operator Veolia is urging politicians to act. "The principle of plurality in collective bargaining agreements is important," says Ulrike Haber-Schilling, labor affairs director at Veolia Verkehr. "But we can't have the train operators striking first, and train conductors possibly following suit. This creates ongoing unrest within the companies, which is also detrimental to the employees."

Merkel: 'I Am Convinced There Is a Need for Regulation'

Chancellor Merkel pledged to resolve the problem in November. The government could not wait until the collective bargaining landscape became deeply fragmented, Merkel said, adding: "I am convinced that there is a need for regulation." However, the plan is not just controversial among legal experts, but also within the coalition government.

On April 5, the administration plans to present the a report on the principle of uniformity in collective agreements to senior leaders of the parties in her government. The report will include three possible solutions. Labor Minister Ursula von der Leyen, a member of Merkel's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is leaning toward the DGB and BDA proposal. It calls for adding a provision to Germany's Collective Bargaining Act stipulating that in companies in which several competing collective bargaining agreements exist, only that agreement reached by the union with the largest number of members organized within that company would apply.