Thursday, December 01, 2022

One day rail strike in Austria impacts
1 million passengers

Robert Besser
2nd December 2022

VIENNA, Austria: During a 24-hour strike by Austrian rail workers held this week over issues related to pay, rail traffic throughout Austria ground to a standstill from midnight and affected some 8,000 connections and one million passengers.

Public transport, regional services and long-distance night trains, as well as rail freight lines, were closed down by the strike.

The head of the country's rail network, OeBB chief Andreas Matthae, told the ORF radio broadcaster that services would be largely back to normal within a day.

"I do not want to rule out the possibility of irregularities on one train or the other, but in general I expect that we will be back to serving our customers with the usual quality," he said.

The main rail workers' union had called for a $417.88 monthly pay raise for the railroad's 50,000 employees, but the counter offer was only $208 per month, plus a one-off payment of $1,000.

This week's "warning strike" was called by the union after a fifth round of negotiations collapsed this week.

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