Friday, February 1, 2008

Biking in the Wind

Thanks to the BVG strike of subway, buses, trams, and ferries today we headed to work on our bikes. The strike will continue till tomorrow around 3pm, because the BVG refuses to make any decent offer of wage increases to its employees for the new contract period.
We have no problem whatsoever with them striking for their demands. Employees have no other power with employers, especially such who these days would prefer to have employees pay for the privilege of working rather than give any money at all.
Without its employees, the BVG would have a lot of empty useless immobile trains and buses, as they did today. We all want a decent living, so lets be willing to pay those whose services we use.
The DB train company's locomotive engineers managed to get a new contract only after months of occasional strikes, which includes the S-Bahn, the only transit system operating in Berlin today. Hopefully the BVG management will negotiate a decent contract with its workers more quickly!
They can't outsource transit workers to some third-world country! It's time "globalized" firms begin to learn that personnel is their most important resource. And every member of the personnel is also, if he receives enough money to buy anything, a potential customer. If they don't get paid for their work, they aren't anybody's customers anymore.

No comments:

Post a Comment