The two-year collective labor agreement for railway workers, which is valid until November 2024, has now been improved due to high inflation. The original plan was to increase lower incomes by at least 190 euros from February 2024. This arrangement is now being put forward.
The starting salaries will be increased retroactively to December 1, 2023. The Austrian Chamber of Commerce and the Vida trade union announced on Thursday that this is a 9.7 percent wage increase.
Everything else remains as agreed a year ago. “The second part of the deal will come into effect in December 2023. The average inflation over the past twelve months serves as a basis. As a result, the KV and IST salaries will be increased by at least 8.3 percent (…),” states a joint press release. Fees and additional costs are also included.
Reduce the burden on core employees
In addition, the social partners have made agreements on, among other things, simpler registration of working hours and changes in the field of mobile travel support. “As a union, we use collective bargaining to ensure railroad workers can continue to pay for their lives. Attractive wages and working conditions make it possible to recruit the urgently needed staff. This also reduces the burden on core staff, who have had to work a lot of overtime for a long time,” said the chairman of the vida union, Gerhard Tauchner.
“Today we had constructive conversations at eye level in which we sensibly and calmly analyzed the current figures and adjusted the KV accordingly (…). We are an industry of the future with reliable companies and without us, without more traffic on the rails, we will not achieve the climate goals,” said Thomas Scheiber of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
