The locomotive drivers union, the GDL, is planning a 30 hour strike beginning Thursday morning.

Commuter trains and the S-Bahn trains will be the most affected.

There is no negotiated settlement in view at the moment. The management of Die Bahn has fired locomotive drivers without notice and threatened others, according to some sources thus provoking the union to organize longer and wider strikes.

Both side are blaming the other for being unreasonable, intransigent, stubborn, and so on.

The GDL is trying to persuade the labor court to lift the court order that currently prevents strikes against international trains. Right now that option is not available to the GDL as a means to increase the pressure.

According to public opinion polls, most Germans think the GDL is right and blame the management of the German Rail Co. for the impasse.

Also, a majority of those polled think the federal government should intervene. To date the transportation ministry has remained on the sidelines.

Given the ever-hardening positions by both sides, no one right now sees any signs of a negotiated settlement.

Unless there is some form of intervention, the labor dispute could go on for a long time. On the other hand, most of the people in the opinion poll felt the two parties to the dispute should slug it out themselves.

If the strikes widen in scope and frequency by extending to international trains and freight trains, the situation could go from one of inconvenience to one of disruption and economic difficulties.

Stay tuned. The soap opera will continue.

What possible economic difficulties can a few days' (or years', or decades') strike on international trains create?

I"ll be in Frankfurt Nov 3-10, should I worry about this train situation? I was planning to take day trips to different locales from my base in the city. How's the bus service as an alternative?

I guess no one can foresee if the strike will still go on in early November.
In Frankfurt you can rely on subways and buses. They are not affected. Looks a bit worse for travels with regional trains. They would not run.
But: so far the strikes have lasted just one day or half a day. The "30 hours" strike will last from 2am till the am hours of the next day.

I'd suggest to have some sight and trips in the city of Frankfurt planned which you could see in case there is a strike on one day.

Ahem flanneruk, you seem to have a penchant for attacking most any statement of fact while concurrently lacking comprehension. I said international and freight trains. You shut down all the freight trains in the UK for several days and I can assure you that economic problems would ensue, and rather quickly at that. The same set of problems would result in Germany.

So far the Germany locomotive drivers have NOT struck the freight trains because of the potential economic and public opinion repercussions. Right now the GDL has public opinion on its side, if the polls are accurate. A strike by the people who drive freight trains would put people out of work in many industries because finished products could not be delivered and raw materials would not arrive.

The trucking industry could keep up with the demand for the flow of good were the freight trains shut down.

As for fearing the strike, the focus so far has been on local traffic as stated elsewhere. It will be hit or miss. In some cases bus service will substitute and in other cases local subways will operate whereas the S-Bahn commuter trains are involved.

Whether or not the strike will escalate is right now unknown to the public.

There is considerable behind the scenes action going on, if tip of the iceberg comments are any indication.
For example, one of the leading politicians, Beck chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, one of the leading parties, has spoken harshly of the GDL tactics.

Here is a clip summarizing his remarks:
Im Tarifkonflikt bei der Bahn hat der SPD-Vorsitzende Beck erneut die Lokführergerwerkschaft GDL kritisiert. Die Forderung nach einem eigenem Tarifvertrag sei nicht gut für den Betriebsfrieden. In der vergangenen Woche hatte Beck die GDL bereits egoistisch genannt.

Essentially Tagesschau is stating that the demands for a separate wage negotiation [by the GDL] is not good for industrial peace (Betriebsfrieden, which is more of a concept germane to German industrial thinking than at first meets the eye.
The German industry likes to deal with large unions; the GDL is trying to slinter away from the single union that Die Deutsche Bahn management has normally faced.) In the past week, Beck as labelled the GDL as egotistical. Beck's final comment to Mehdorn and the senior management of Die Bahn was to remain firm.

He did NOT go as far as suggesting government intervention. Usually, the government of Germany stays out of legal strikes. How far this one goes before something happens at the Federal level remains to be seen.

Beck also stated that the GDL organizes on a small fraction of the railway employees and by trying to pull away as a separate group, the GDL is a threat to traditional German ways of collective bargaining, which is to say large unions.

I might add that the airline pilots and the doctors broke that tradition by striking separately for higher wages. The pilots strike was quickly settled; the doctors gave the health care industry little choice because denying people health care gets attention in a hurry but it took a series of warning strikes before action resulted.

The GDL seems to be following a similar plan.

I think at root here is the fact that Mehdorn and other senior management personnel at Die Bahn fear, and probably with good reason, that if the locomotive drivers get away with separate wage negotiations, the other subunits of the larger rail employees union such as train condutors, ticket sellers, brakemen, maintenance personnel, etc. will then begin clamoring for their own separate recognition. Rather than dealing with one union, Die Bahn conceivably could be faced with having to negotiate with many small unions.

The size of the wage demands are large, but compared to the impact separate wage negotiations would have on the entire industrial scene, the wage money is trivial.