Quality employment, Outsourcing, Germany

Services union ver.di is targetting a selection of public and private hospitals in seven regions, calling on them to negotiate agreements to reduce excessive workloads. The union argues that many healthworkers are under pressure to work long hours to fill the gap left by a shortage of 162000 workers across the sector. This is having a detrimental impact on workers' health and ver.di wants employers to recognise this and their responsibility to provide good working conditions.

(May 2017) Two members of ver.di with the support of their union and the DGB confederation have won an important ruling in the European Court of Justice that protects the link between their pay and conditions and the public sector collective agreement. The two hospital employees were part of a transfer to a private company in 1997 but were then transferred again when the Asklepios company won the contract. Asklepios refused to maintain the link with the public sector collective agreement arguing that it was not party to the original negotiations. The European Court decided in favour of the

(April 2017) Services union ver.di has signed a key agreement in Bremen that covers around 3200 eldercare workers employed by several non-profit care providers. The union sees this is as a significant step towards better collective bargaining coverage in the sector and helps remove pay and conditions as a factor in competition. Meanwhile the union has also negotiated two new agreements in the health sector, one provides a 7,3% pay increase for 3900 workers at the University Hospital in Leipzig and the other is a 5.1% pay increase for the 24000 employees in 36 hospitals run by the Helios