German rail company Deutsche Bahn (DB) and the train drivers' union GDL have agreed to enter mediation to be led by two former leading conservative politicians, with the union agreeing to refrain from further strike action during the negotiations, according to dpa. The mediators agreed to by the two sides were Heiner Geissler and Kurt Biedenkopf, both 77 years old and former leading figures in the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party. DB chief executive Hartmut Mehdorn confirmed that the two men had been agreed on with the GDL and said he was "very pleased that two experienced moderators and recognised personalities had declared their readiness to accept such a sophisticated task." Geissler is a former general secretary of the CDU, while Biedenkopf had previously served as CDU premier of the eastern German state of Saxony. Biedenkopf, along with former Social Democratic chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, had served as a mediator in a previous wage dispute at the German railways in the autumn of 2006. Geissler - who had been proposed by the GDL - had served as a mediator four times between 1997 and 2002 in wage disputes in the German construction industry. The GDL held out an olive branch Thursday evening to accompany the agreement on the mediators. "There will be no strikes during the mediation," a GDL spokesman said in Frankfurt. He said the GDL hoped that the first talks could take place next week. "We are interested in sitting down very quickly at the bargaining table," the union spokesman said. The GDL is hoping that the mediation would lead to a wage agreement between DB and the train drivers separate from a wage deal with the all of the railway company's employees, something which DB has so far categorically rejected. The agreement on the two mediators came amid an increasingly heated war of words between DB and GDL in the train drivers' wage dispute, with the union accusing the company of unfair tactics. The GDL union called out its staff on city services in Berlin and Hamburg for two hours during the morning peak on Thursday, causing widespread disruption to commuters. The action, announced 12 hours ahead of time, came after a labour court in the southern city of Nuremberg on Wednesday banned a national strike targeted at goods traffic that the GDL had set for Thursday. The court also banned strikes aimed at long-distance passenger services, saying the impact of the strikes on the national economy was out of proportion to the rights of the drivers to press their demands. The GDL launched an appeal, which was to be heard in Nuremberg on Friday. Another court banned strikes targeting DB's regional services. GDL boss Manfred Schell accused DB of unfair tactics for failing to inform GDL lawyers that applications were being made to the courts. He said future strikes would not be announced ahead of time. Several legal experts said the labour court rulings were shaky, and trade unionists universally condemned them. Juergen Peters, head of the powerful IG-Metall union, said the rulings undermined the right to strike and that it was absurd to ban strikes on the grounds they would cause economic damage. "A strike that does not apply economic pressure is not a strike, but rather collective begging," Peters said. The GDL is demanding a 31-per-cent pay rise for its members and a wage deal separate from that entered into by the national rail company, Deutsche Bahn, with other unions. Deutsche Bahn has struck a deal with a 4.5-per-cent pay hike with two other unions representing 134,000 workers. About 8,000 train drivers organized in the GDL voted for a strike in a ballot, the results of which were announced Monday. The strike comes ahead of the planned part-privatization next year of the wholly state-owned national rail network.
