BERLIN, March 1 (Reuters) - German railway workers launched the first of a series of strikes on Saturday designed to cripple parts of the country and force state-owned Deutsche Bahn into accepting their wage demands.
Workers of rail unions Transnet and GDBA took industrial action in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's industrial heartland and venue of weekend carnival celebrations, leading to the cancellation of some local services and delays to a few inter-city expresses.
Unions plan a rolling series of brief regional stoppages causing disruption across the country before a third round of talks scheduled for March 6. They say a failure to reach a deal over the next few weeks could result in Germany's first all-out nationwide rail strike since World War Two.
The unions are demanding pay hikes of five percent over 12 months. Deutsche Bahn is offering annual increases equivalent to inflation, currently running at just under 1.5 percent, for the next three years.
The stoppages could affect up to 160,000 of Deutsche Bahn's 211,000 employees and hit both passenger and freight traffic.
On Saturday, a two-hour stoppage at Cologne, the city hosting the largest of this weekend's carnival festivities, began at 3 a.m. (0200 GMT), followed by a walk-out in the Ruhr Valley city of Dortmund.
The unions are also seeking pay rises in ex-communist eastern Germany to bring wages up to the level of those in the west.
Deutsche Bahn has offered to discuss pay differentials across the country and is considering a bonus payment should it achieve a goal of turning a profit in 2004 as it readies itself for a possible stock market flotation.