Germans face travel chaos as public transport workers stage nationwide strike

Public transport workers in several German states staged a strike on Friday amid a deadlock in labor negotiations, bringing train, tram, and bus services to a grinding halt and impacting millions of passengers. The strike, organized by the Verdi trade union, has seen varying durations across the country. In Berlin, the strike was set to last 48 hours, with public services expected to resume only in the early hours of Sunday.

The union said the strike aims to gain leverage in the ongoing negotiations over salaries and working conditions.

The wage talks involve around 150 public transport companies across Germany's federal states and cover roughly 100,000 employees, with specific demands differing from region to region.

Many employees participating in the strike emphasized that the current salary growth has failed to keep pace with the soaring inflation, leading to a significant decline in their real purchasing power.

"Due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, our cost of living in Berlin has indeed increased. For instance, rent, inflation, food, electricity, and energy, everything has gone up in price," said a driver of the Berlin Transportation Stock Company (BVG).

"Basically, everyone I know, including myself, has received a rent increase notice. Everyone is shocked when they go grocery shopping every week because they find the food so expensive. Basically, everyone is affected," said another BVG employee.

According to Verdi, there has been very little progress in the negotiations between labor and management, and it remains unclear when a formal agreement might be reached. This strike marks the second large-scale action in the current round of public transport wage talks. In early February, the first strike paralyzed public transportation across the majority of Germany.

Germans face travel chaos as public transport workers stage nationwide strike

Germans face travel chaos as public transport workers stage nationwide strike

Germans face travel chaos as public transport workers stage nationwide strike

Germans face travel chaos as public transport workers stage nationwide strike

The People's Bank of China (PBOC), the country's central bank, starts a 600-billion-yuan (about 90 billion U.S. dollars) outright reverse repo operation on Monday to maintain ample liquidity in the banking system.

The operation has a fixed quantity and is carried out through interest-rate bidding, with winning bids determined at various price levels. It will have a tenor of six months, or 183 days, according to the central bank.

A total of 600 billion yuan of six-month outright reverse repos will mature in June. This implies that the central bank's new round of operation constitutes a rollover of the same amount, ending three consecutive months of reduced volume operations.

Outright reverse repo operations, a tool the central bank introduced in October 2024 to manage liquidity in the national banking system, are conducted each month with a tenor of no more than one year.

Under this mechanism, the central bank purchases bonds from primary dealers, such as large commercial banks, while agreeing on a future date for the dealers to repurchase the same quantity and type of bonds. This process effectively injects liquidity into the market.

China's central bank injects 600 bln yuan via outright reverse repo to maintain liquidity