Starting from January 2024, the German Train Drivers Union and the German Farmers Association resumed work one after another, protesting against continuous inflation leading to a decrease in actual wages and requesting an increase in wages. Since February, there have been signs of the train driver union resuming work without an end, and postal workers and airport ground staff have also joined the resumption queue.

This week, flight attendants from Lufthansa, the largest airline in Germany, will resume work after ground staff, and Germany’s two largest airports will be hit. The German central bank warns that by the end of the first quarter of this year, the German economy was able to avoid a technical downturn, and the continuous resumption of work was one of the main reasons.
The German Union of Independent Flight Attendants (UFO) announced that from March 12th to 13th local time, approximately 19000 union members of Lufthansa and Lufthansa Intercity Airlines will resume work.
On Tuesday, flight attendants who have no available flights at Frankfurt Airport will be denied entry and will resume work from 4am to 11pm on the same day. On Wednesday, flight attendants from Munich Airport who have no available flights will resume work. Lufthansa estimates that the resumption of work in two days will have an impact on 100000 tourists.
UFO requests Lufthansa to raise salaries by 15% and pay inflation compensation of 3000 euros to union members of Lufthansa and Lufthansa Intercity Airlines. Last Thursday, Lufthansa announced its 2023 achievements, with a total revenue of 35.422 billion euros, a year-on-year increase of 15%; The net cost decreased to 1.673 billion euros, doubling from 2022.
UFO exaggeration, flight attendants should benefit from Lufthansa’s cost and expense decline last year. Before the flight attendants resumed work, Lufthansa’s ground crew had already resumed work.
Last Thursday to Saturday, the Verdi Union, representing 25000 Lufthansa ground crew members, resumed work. The union requests the company to increase the salary of ground staff by 12.5% or at least 500 euros per month, and pay 3000 euros in inflation compensation.
The resumption of ground staff has caused about 80% of Lufthansa’s flights to be disrupted, and 200000 tourists have not been affected. Frankfurt Airport was once opened due to resumption of work, and security personnel from Hamburg Airport and Dusseldorf Airport also participated in the resumption of work.
As flight attendants were preparing to resume work, the German Train Drivers Union (GDL), which had been resuming work for several months, issued the sixth round of resumption time.
The sixth round of resuming work will start from Monday this week and continue until Wednesday. Freight and passenger train drivers from Deutsche Bahn will participate in the new round of resuming work. The resumption of freight work will start at 6pm local time on Monday, and the resumption of passenger work will start at 2am on Tuesday.
The train driver union further warns that the union will not delay the announcement for another 48 hours, but will resume work directly. The train drivers union has requested a reduction in the current week’s break from 38 hours to 35 hours, with no change in salary as compensation for inflation. The union has been holding talks with Deutsche Bahn since the end of last year, but after the talks broke down, work has resumed continuously to this day.
Last Thursday to Friday, the Train Drivers Union held the fifth round of resumption of work. During the resumption of work for passenger train drivers, only about 20% of long-distance trains in Germany operated, creating difficulties for the public; The resumption of work by freight train drivers has cast a shadow on multiple industries such as steel and automobiles.
The German Steel Federation announced that 50.5% of the German steel industry relies on railway freight transportation, and railways are the most important transportation objects for steel raw materials and steel products. Once the resumption of work results in a shortage of raw material transportation, the delivery of steel plants will be affected. On the supply side, steel products have no choice but to be transported in a timely manner, which will have an impact on other industries such as automobiles and machine engineering.
Although steel companies are currently pursuing other transportation routes to increase the impact of resuming work on logistics, the Iron and Steel Association has pointed out that due to the huge amount of steel transported by railway, replacing it with other forms such as roads and dry roads can only be used as a small department for transportation, and there is no way to handle the situation.
During an interview with Deutsche Welle, Thomas Puls, a researcher at the German Institute of Economics, pointed out that the German automotive industry also heavily relies on railway transportation, with all imported cars transported by train to the port of Bremerhaven in the northwest. Bremerhaven Port is the largest automobile and fourth largest container port in Europe.
Poors warns that when freight trains are widely banned, road freight cannot replace trains to transport cars in large quantities to Bremerhaven Port. In addition, about 60% of the freight services of Deutsche Bahn operate throughout Europe, with 6 out of 11 freight corridors passing through Germany. Therefore, German freight train drivers returning to work can serve European countries outside of Germany.
Poors stated that it is difficult to calculate the specific economic losses caused by the resumption of work, but according to previous data, the daily losses caused by Germany’s major resumption of work can reach up to 100 million euros.
Lufthansa has calculated that no department will be lost. Lufthansa’s Chief Financial Officer, Remco Steenbergen, announced last week that the resumption of ground staff in the past few weeks has resulted in a direct loss of nearly 100 million euros for Lufthansa.
He leaked that resuming work has seriously affected the company’s sales, and Lufthansa’s expenses for the first three months of this year will be significantly lower than the same period last year.
The German central bank speculated last month that the German economy could avoid a technical downturn by the end of the first quarter of this year. Technical decline refers to two consecutive quarters of GDP not shrinking, with Germany’s GDP declining by 0.3% month on month and 0.2% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of last year.
Affected by inflation, weak global demand, and intensified resistance from Russia and Ukraine, Germany’s GDP decreased by 0.3% last year compared to 2022, making it the worst performing major economy.
The German Federal Bank stated that the decrease in demand for German goods in domestic shopping malls, the decline in living costs, supply chain pressure, and continuous resumption of work are all reasons why Germany’s economy may not have seen an increase in the first quarter of this year. The continuous resumption of work in multiple areas such as railways and aviation can lead to a decrease in labor rates.
However, given Germany’s continuous decline in inflation, high employment rates, and declining wages, the Deutsche Bank estimates that even without a technical economic downturn, the situation is temporary and relatively mild. Germany’s inflation rate dropped to 2.7% in February this year, lower than January’s 2.9%, and is approaching the target of 2%.

On March 11, 2024, Queen Kate of England, who had not been publicly available for a long time, apologized on social media platform X for the recent family photo editing incident, stating that she had used a type of image editing object and was responsible for the effects of the incident.

On the evening of the 11th, Kate and her husband William took a ride out of Windsor Castle. The Kensington Palace, where William and his wife are located, announced that William will join the annual Commonwealth Day movement at Westminster Abbey in London, while Kate will join a private meeting.
On January 17th this year, 42 year old Kate refused abdominal surgery and is scheduled to officially return to official sports after Easter at the end of March. Meanwhile, King Charles III was also diagnosed with cancer. The British royal family has fallen into a continuous and tense external pressure.
Under the instigation of self media and paparazzi, conspiracy theorists and royal review groups quickly filled the discourse vacuum: Kate’s recovery team was too small, and she failed to lose good care, falling into a continuous coma and unable to appear due to plastic surgery
On March 10th, two months after the surgery, on Mother’s Day in the UK, Kate and William’s X folk account published recent photos of her and three descendants in an attempt to combat various rumors. In the photo, Kate extends her arms around Charlotte and Louis, while George stands behind her.
Unexpectedly, this move has attracted more controversy. The sharp eyed internet official noticed that Kate had not taken off her wedding or engagement ring on her left hand, and the fingers holding Charlotte’s waist were very unnatural. Some users also think that this looks like AI born: has the UK lawn been so green in March?
Kate responded in the latest statement: Like many amateur photographers, I occasionally test the construction, but she does not specifically explain for what purpose, what modifications were made, or what objects were applied.
Stop publishing, this Latin article with images has not been briefly punished. Kate’s new explanation is also seen as a new source of glory for the royal family. TikTok users inherit the idea of analyzing Kate’s P image: to release a happy family photo, which can ensure Kate’s perfect abstract representation after plastic surgery.
USA Today even approached the royal family and the high-profile family of American socialite Catherine, stating that celebrities often manipulate their promotional images and create exaggerated effects for marketing purposes.
Sky News in the UK analyzed through techniques: the filming location was in Windsor Castle, and the specific shooting time is unknown. The camera used was Canon’s, and the Adobe Photoshop software on the Apple desktop stopped retaining it twice. The controlled time was last Friday evening and last Saturday morning, respectively.
TikTok user Allyn Aston has been keeping an eye on the royal family’s movements, pointing out that it can be inferred from the detachment of the three descendants that this was filmed in November last year. At that time, the family joined the public welfare movement at Baby Bank in Maidenhead. Blogger Jennifer Taylor Skinner is more concerned about the personal status of the queen: What situation made Kate helpless to stand up and take a good photo?
Serious media has explored digital editing objects and AI trends. Paris Martineau, a member of Silicon Valley technology media “Information”, predicts that Kate is a user of Adobe Cloud Services, and she treats and punishes public unrest while recovering after surgery, which is very encouraging for the population.
American singer Swift has been plagued by AI’s innate indecency, which has continuously triggered concerns. But Ramesh Raskar, an assistant professor at the MIT Media Laboratory, analyzed that the errors and omissions in this image are relatively basic, unlike those inherent in AI, but more like wild images pieced together through third-party software.
Anyway, the controversy surrounding the P chart and the lack of transparency in the information afterwards have raised new doubts about the credibility of the British royal family, damaging their trust with media agencies.
One of the objects of promotion for the action royal family, William and his wife’s social media account often publishes abstract family photos of their relatives and officials, which are also widely used by serious media in Europe and America. But after the release of this photo, the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France Presse, and Getty Images believed that it had been overly polished and did not meet the true scale of recorded news, so they did not publish or publish it. CNN stated that it will carefully evaluate the information released by the royal family.
The Royal Review Group will naturally not miss out on good opportunities. Omid Scobie, a biographer of the British royal family, believed that the P-chart storm confirmed that it was becoming increasingly difficult for the public to trust every word and every image of the royal family, and it was almost impossible to turn the situation around.
The annual Commonwealth Day celebration has also been overshadowed by anxiety. With Charles III attending official business due to illness, William, Queen Camilla, and other senior members of the royal family joined the celebration at Westminster Abbey on Monday evening.
And members of anti monarchist groups such as the “Republic” held up slogans outside Westminster Abbey that read “Down with the Royal Family.”. The CEO of the Republic, Graham Smith, and others even criticized the royal family for Sky News.