Greetings.
Early last week we were informed via email from several friends and colleagues that the drivers of all Stuttgart buses and trains would be on strike on Wednesday of this last week. Since we often drive to school - except David who always bikes - we anticipated on Wednesday morning that the traffic would be horrendous, so all of us decided to bike the 7 kilometers to school on Wednesday morning, cleverly avoiding the traffic.
We biked through neighborhoods and farming fields heavily scented with freshly spread manure and compost. We biked past the American barracks and around the corner to the Mercedes headquarters where a woman, stuck in traffic behind two large trucks had gotten out of her car, left her door open, and was screaming in rage at the drivers and the gate man. When we first left our neighborhood, I thought that maybe the strike was not really causing that much of an issue since I didn't see the traffic I expected. Maybe, I wondered, the buses and trains do not transport as many people as I originally thought. Once we turned the corner near Mercedes, the lines of traffic were immediately evident, backing up in a long snaking line down the road. People generally seemed patient with the slow-down, but I was grateful to be on the bike paths and riding bikes to school.
It made me wonder what the complains of the drivers actually were. Were their working conditions unfair? Doubtful. Were they paid poorly? Probably not. Based on what I have seen here in Germany in our own place of employment and what I have learned from colleagues, workers' rights are carefully controlled by unions and workers have protections that are beyond the rights, honestly, of probably most working people in the world. The rights of immigrant workers in Saudi Arabia, for example, are pretty much non-existent. I wondered about German employees who did not have the luxury on Strike Day to opt for a car. Did they have to call in sick? Not everyone owns a car and not everyone owns a bike or has a safe bike route to work. It's a luxury to call a strike that affects so many other people's ability to get to their own jobs. Perhaps those families just stayed home. Certainly there were employees who, that day, could simply not get to work. What then?
As I crossed the highway, I saw an ambulance stuck in the unusually intense traffic and wondered how that was going to turn out. Perhaps the bus and train drivers have legitimate complaints about salary, working conditions, or benefits, but I hope they realize the tremendous toll it takes on many other, often less secure or less fortunate, workers when their source of transportation is suddenly not available.
Early last week we were informed via email from several friends and colleagues that the drivers of all Stuttgart buses and trains would be on strike on Wednesday of this last week. Since we often drive to school - except David who always bikes - we anticipated on Wednesday morning that the traffic would be horrendous, so all of us decided to bike the 7 kilometers to school on Wednesday morning, cleverly avoiding the traffic.
We biked through neighborhoods and farming fields heavily scented with freshly spread manure and compost. We biked past the American barracks and around the corner to the Mercedes headquarters where a woman, stuck in traffic behind two large trucks had gotten out of her car, left her door open, and was screaming in rage at the drivers and the gate man. When we first left our neighborhood, I thought that maybe the strike was not really causing that much of an issue since I didn't see the traffic I expected. Maybe, I wondered, the buses and trains do not transport as many people as I originally thought. Once we turned the corner near Mercedes, the lines of traffic were immediately evident, backing up in a long snaking line down the road. People generally seemed patient with the slow-down, but I was grateful to be on the bike paths and riding bikes to school.
It made me wonder what the complains of the drivers actually were. Were their working conditions unfair? Doubtful. Were they paid poorly? Probably not. Based on what I have seen here in Germany in our own place of employment and what I have learned from colleagues, workers' rights are carefully controlled by unions and workers have protections that are beyond the rights, honestly, of probably most working people in the world. The rights of immigrant workers in Saudi Arabia, for example, are pretty much non-existent. I wondered about German employees who did not have the luxury on Strike Day to opt for a car. Did they have to call in sick? Not everyone owns a car and not everyone owns a bike or has a safe bike route to work. It's a luxury to call a strike that affects so many other people's ability to get to their own jobs. Perhaps those families just stayed home. Certainly there were employees who, that day, could simply not get to work. What then?
As I crossed the highway, I saw an ambulance stuck in the unusually intense traffic and wondered how that was going to turn out. Perhaps the bus and train drivers have legitimate complaints about salary, working conditions, or benefits, but I hope they realize the tremendous toll it takes on many other, often less secure or less fortunate, workers when their source of transportation is suddenly not available.
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