Berlin - Hartmut Mehdorn, the embattled head of German rail
carrier Deutsche Bahn, tendered his resignation on Monday after
losing political support in the wake of a row over data protection.
Mehdorn, who has run the state-owned company since 1999, has been
under growing pressure amid disclosures that the rail operator had
been accessing confidential staff data for more than a decade.
Earlier this year, it emerged that 173,000 of Deutsche Bahn's
220,000 employees had been screened this way in apparent
contravention of data protection laws.
Over the weekend, further revelations surfaced that the company
had monitored the emails of staff suspected of leaking information to
journalists and had deleted a 2007 email sent by the train drivers
union GDL to employees calling for strike action.
This prompted calls from rail union leaders for him to step down
and led to senior members of Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition
government saying his position was no longer tenable.
Mehdorn, 66, told a news conference outlining the company's 2008
figures that he had asked the head of Deutsche Bahn's supervisory
board to release him from his contract.
He said he hoped a successor could be found by the summer.
The German government issued a statement paying tribute to
Mehdorn's performance during nearly 10 years as chief executive and
saying it respected his offer to step down.
Union leaders called the move 'a logical consequence of the
snooping scandal.'
Mehdorn denied any personal wrongdoing, but said as chief of
Deutsche Bahn he was responsible for what happened in such a large
company whether he was aware of it or not.
He defended the efforts of the rail operator's compliance unit
which as part of an anti-corruption drive had authorized the
comparison of personal data about employees with that of its
suppliers.
The rail boss also claimed the deletion of the strike call email
had been done for technical reasons, pointing out that it was sent
illegally over the Deutsche Bahn server.
Mehdorn himself admitted in February that, as part of an
anti-corruption campaign, Deutsche Bahn spied on 173,000 employees in
2002 and 2003. Official documents have since shown Deutsche Bahn
screened its entire workforce again in 2005 for corruption.
A pugnacious figure who never shied away from a fight, Mehdorn
pared the rail operator's costs and shrugged off a series of crises,
including a wave of strikes and financial setbacks.
He will leave behind a company that saw pre-tax profits for 2008
rise 4.8 per cent to 2.48 billion euros (3.2 billion dollars),
according to figures released on Monday.
'Under my leadership, (Deutsche) Bahn is in good shape despite the
serious economic and financial crisis,' Mehdorn told the Sunday
edition of Germany's Bild newspaper.
Mehdorn had hoped to see the company partially privatized, but was
forced to put his plan on ice in November because of the global
financial crisis. The issue triggered public outrage because of
generous bonuses promised to executives if the sale went ahead.
Other recent scandals to dog the company involved safety issues
related to its high-speed ICE trains and overzealous conductors
ejecting children from trains because they had mislaid their tickets.
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