Another fatal accident on German railways

Another fatal accident occurred on German railways. Early in the morning of Monday, October 21, a 46-year-old train driver died while working at the Duisburg depot.

Railway workers in Germany (Photo: to.wi / flickr / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The driver involved was traveling in his wagon at the large Arcelor Mittal plant in Duisburg during the night shift from Sunday to Monday. At around 3:30 a.m. he left the driver’s cab to continue operating the locomotive via remote control – a procedure quite common in standard work processes. For reasons that have not yet been explained, he fell under the locomotive and was crushed by its several-ton weight.

A friend who discovered the seriously injured man immediately provided first aid and called the emergency number. The ambulance crew resuscitated him on the spot and took him to the hospital, where he died.

Railway workers, train drivers and their supporters must treat this tragedy as a signal to take action and join the Railway Action Committee.

This latest horrific accident is the eleventh this year in the rail sector. This spate of accidents is neither natural nor inevitable, but is the result of a ruthless railway overhaul that looks more like a “general destruction” accompanied by the loss of 30,000 jobs.

For DB (Deutsche Bahn, German Rail) workers, 2024 could be the deadliest year in a long time. Here’s a quick overview, listing the nine fatalities and two near fatalities so far this year:

January 19, near Koblenz on the Rhine: a 39-year-old employee of a construction company was hit by a regional train on the tracks and suffered fatal injuries.
March 1, Freilassing (Bavaria): A 32-year-old construction worker fell several meters through a roof onto a platform and was crushed under falling concrete slabs; the other was seriously injured.
March 7, Raunheim (Hesse): At a Deutsche Bahn construction site, a 21-year-old worker was hit and dragged by a construction train. He died shortly afterwards in the University Hospital in Frankfurt am Main.
March 30, Bruchsal, southern Germany: A 42-year-old track worker died during welding work. While working on the side of the tracks, a worker lying on the ground was missed by an excavator driver while reversing, ran over and fatally injured.
April 14, Göttingen: A 33-year-old construction worker was hit by a heavily loaded wheel loader at the southern portal of the Rauhebergtunnel (renovation of the Hannover-Würzburg high-speed line). He died at the scene of the accident.
April 15, Lübeck: A railway employee (55), working as a guard at a temporarily closed level crossing, was hit by a locomotive and suffered serious injuries. The man was saved thanks to emergency surgery, but his life is disfigured.
July 1, Bretten (Karlsruhe district): A track worker (49), member of a construction crew, was hit and killed by a regional train.
September 3, Wörth (Bavaria): While maneuvering a locomotive, the driver was trapped between the locomotive and a truck, which collided with a train. The driver was trapped and his legs were so badly damaged that a helicopter had to take him to the nearest hospital.
October 1 near Fachingen in southern Germany: During track work on the Lahntalbahn in the Fachinger Tunnel (Baden-Württemberg), a 55-year-old DB employee was hit by a freight train and suffered fatal injuries.
October 9, Lower Franconia: A track worker was struck and killed by an ICE high-speed train near Kitzingen at 1:30 a.m. The railway hired a 52-year-old DB employee as a security guard at the construction site.
October 21, Duisburg: A 46-year-old driver died while working at night on shunting work for Arcelor Mittal.

This list is undoubtedly incomplete because there is no central body that records all accidents, much less a body that publishes everything, warns railway workers and investigates the causes to prevent accidents from recurring in the future. “We don’t know how many people die at work,” labor lawyer Wolfhard Kohte recently confirmed.

As reported by the German television ZDF-Frontal, the film Death on the tracks recently showed that construction teams are now often dispatched without adequate track fencing. For the men on the tracks, their job becomes a kind of suicide mission, knowing that there is no one to ensure their safety or adequately warn them of an approaching train.

It is striking how many accidents occur on the track at night. A large number of employees working for the railway subcontractor are also affected. Neither the railway authority nor the two main German railway unions, EVG and GDL, take proper responsibility for these workers.

A colleague who died recently in Duisburg also worked for a subcontractor of Arcelor Mittal. The steel group, which employs 900 workers in Duisburg and 190,000 worldwide, issued a tepid statement through its spokesman: “Our thoughts are with the man’s family.” Neither the EVG nor the train drivers’ union GDL nor its regional group NRW even mentioned the accident on their websites.

It’s high time for railway workers, train drivers and their supporters to organize themselves into action committees independent of trade unions! Established a year and a half ago, the Railway Action Committee is an association of railway workers, with or without a union book, who are no longer prepared to tolerate the domination of the trade union apparatus.

The action committee is addressed to railway employees and train drivers, regardless of whether they are employed by DB, another company or a subcontractor. Our goal is to jointly resist massive attacks on wages, jobs and working conditions. Our allies are not managers and trade union officials, many of whom sit on lucrative supervisory boards, but railway workers across Europe and the world.

In its founding resolution, the committee declared: “Our rights to fair wages and fair working conditions take precedence over the interests of railroad management, investors and speculators.” This demand is all the more important because the German government is now sacrificing the interests of the workers in order to meet the demands of its war policy.

Due to the increasing number of accidents, we are calling on railway workers to document relevant information and share it with us. We will do everything in our power to explain the causes, publicize them on WSWS and fight to put an end to such accidents.

Please write to us if you have information to share with colleagues and would like to participate in the work of the railway action committee! Write via WhatsApp, +49-163-337-8340 and register using the form below!