Work-life balance, Health, Germany

(May 2016) Member of the ver.di union at the Charité hospital group in Berlin have voted overwhelmingly to accept a collective agreement with important provisions on jobs, staff levels and health and safety. A joint committee will monitor implementation of the agreement.The agreement will cover 14000 employees and ver.di hopes it will be a model for the sector where the union is campaigning for legal rules on minimum staffing levels. Read more at > ver.di (DE)

(June 2016) Members of the services union ver.di working for the Median rehabilitation clinic in Berlin took strike action on 17 June as part of the union's campaign to defend collective bargaining. Median is the largest private provider of rehabilitation services with 13000 employees in 78 facilities across the country. The company announced it would no longer negotiate a collective agreement and would look to local arrangements with works councils or individual employees. Ver.di has strongly attacked the company, owned since 2014 by the Dutch investment fund Waterland, for aiming to maximise

(August 2016) The ver.di service union has negotiated improved pay, hours and holiday entitlement in a new collective agreement covering 50000 workers employed by the German Red Cross. Pay will increase by 2.4% this month with a further rise of 2.35% in March 2017 and the pay structure agreed in the public sector for social services workers will be adopted. Emergency service workers will see a gradual reducation in weekly working hours from 48 to 45 by 2019 while those with less than 10 years' service will also see their annual leave increase from 26 to 29 days over the same period. Read more

(August 2016) Services union ver.di is concerned about the impact on workers' rights of the takeover of the AHG group by the Median company. With the takeover Median will become largest rehabilitation company in Germany with 15000 workers but it has taken a stance against collective bargaining under the influence of its main investing company Waterland. It has said to ver.di it will no longer negotiate collective agreements. Read more at ver.di (DE)

Ver.di, the main trade union in the health sector, is close to securing an agreement on staffing and workloads with Augsburg hospital in Bavaria. As the institution is set to become a university hospital from 1 January next year, the agreement has to be confirmed by the state health minister. Ver.di members at the hospital have voted 93% in favour of industrial action and so the union says it is ready to take action if the agreement is rejected. Similar to other agreements negotiated recently in hospitals in North Rhine Westphalia and Saarland, the Augsburg deal will mean additional jobs - 100

Strike action by workers at university hospitals in Essen and Düsseldorf in western Germany has helped push employers to the negotiating table to discuss measures to reduce workloads - a longstanding issue that the trade union ver.di is trying to address across the health and social services sectors. The union and the TdL employer organisation have finally agreed on the key points for the negotiations. These include measures to reduce the pressure on staff, future procedures to address staffing requirements and what to do when there is not enough staff, immediate measures to reduce workloads

Workers at university hospitals in Düsseldorf and Essen, members of the ver.di services union, have resumed their campaign of strike action over workloads. As reported in last month's epsucob@NEWS the union had decided to suspend strike action to allow further negotiations to take place with the employers. However, after four rounds of negotiations the employers failed to come up with any effective proposals to provide extra staff in wards, operating theatres or intensive care and so ver.di decided to lift the suspension of strike action.

Health services union ver.di is considering all-out strike action following the refusal of management at the Düsseldorf and Essen university hospitals to negotiate an agreement to tackle excessive workloads (see two previous editions of epsucob@NEWS). The union had been discussing various measures to tackle staff shortages and overwork and it had welcomed an initiative by the employers to take on 100 extra staff. Further talks were expected but then to ver.di's surprise on 14 August the employers announced that they wouldn't be seeking to negotiate an agreement. Ver.di will continue to press

EPSU has sent solidarity greetings to members of the ver.di services union who are taking strike action against the Celenus care company, a subsidiary of the French multinational Orpea. The company has sacked worker representatives, has threatened to outsource cleaning jobs and refuses to negotiate a collective agreement.

Health union ver.di has suspended its strike action in university hospitals in Düsseldorf and Essen to allow mediators to help resolve the conflict over workloads and staffing (see previous three issues of epsucob@NEWS). It agreed to the initiative following the intervention of the labour minister of the North Rhine Westfalia region. Earlier in the year ver.di was successful in negotiating a key agreement on staffing and workloads covering hospitals in Freiburg, Heidelburg, Tübingen and Ulm in the Baden-Württemburg region. The agreement set out a procedure for determining staffing levels in

Employees of the Celenus health company, part of the Orpea multinational, continued their campaign for a collective agreement when they travelled to a protest in Berlin on 11 December where they joined other striking workers from the Charité physiotherapy clinic. The workers at Celenus's rehabilitation clinic in Bad Langensalza in the Thüringen region are involved in long-running strike action in an attempt to secure a collective agreement and better pay. The company has repeatedly refused to negotiate with the ver.di trade union. Action last year was supported by EPSU and its affiliates that

In advance of the third round of pay negotiations, a series of warning strikes by employees of the Red Cross have been taking place across the country to show the level of support for a decent pay rise. Public services union ver.di is calling for a pay rise of 7.5% with a minimum increase of EUR 200 a month. So far the employers have only offered a EUR 220 lump sum payment and a 2.4% increase this year with a further rise of 2.2% in July 2019. Ver.di says that the agreement should reflect current pay bargaining trends and should also include provisions on work-life balance and health that