Health and Safety, Working Time, Germany

(March 2017) Public service union ver.di organised a national "take your break" day on 21 February for all hospital workers. The union wanted to make the point that understaffing and excessive workloads means that many healthcare staff miss their breaks because they want to ensure the level of care for patients. A survey by ver.di revealed that 70% of hospital workers on night shift said they didn't take any breaks. The action is organised across all public, private, welfare and church-run institutions.

(July 2017) A new report from the BKK business health insurance federation reveals the extent to which stress and overwork are having a negative impact on employees in the health and care sectors. With a shortfall of over 160000 workers in the sector, many employees are under a lot of pressure, working long hours and missing breaks. Workers in the sector take an average of 24 days' sick leave a year compared to 16 for workers across all sectors. Services union ver.di underlined the need for minimum staffing levels and for higher collective bargaining coverage in the sector.

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.

Workers at the Charité hospital in Berlin, members of the ver.di services union, organised a day of action on 8 August in protest at the stalled health and safety negotiations on the question of staffing and overwork. The workers put on rose-tinted glasses in response to the claims by the hospital management that things were improving at the hospital. Ver.di wants the hospital to agree binding rules on how it deals with understaffed shifts but so far the management has failed to move towards an agreement.

The trade union-linked WSI research organisation says that the latest figures indicate 37.7 hours as the average for the collectively agreed working week, with a higher average in the East (38.7) compared to the West (37.6). Across industries the working week varies from 34 to 40 hours with around a fifth of all workers covered by a collective agreement on a 35-hour week. The WSI notes that after a wave of agreements on shorter working hours in the 1980s and 1990s, there has been very little change. In the early 2000s a small number of agreements, including the public sector, experienced an

On 12 September, service union ver.di organised a nationwide action by healthworkers to highlight the massive problem of understaffing in the sector. Staff were asked to ensure that they followed precisely the rules for disinfecting their hands before dealing with each new patient. Ver.di selected this as one example of the many tasks that workers simply don't have time to do properly because of the pressure of work. The union points out that workers are often under pressure to make decisions about which jobs they need to do, leading to stress and even sickness. This is the latest step in ver

Member of the services union ver.di working in several hospitals across the country took strike action on 19 September as part of the union's campaign on safe staffing levels and reducing workloads. EPSU general secretary Jan Willem Goudriaan sent a message of support, underlining the importance of protecting the well-being of both health workers and patients by taking urgent action to reduce staff shortages in the sector estimated at over 160000, including over 70000 frontline care workers.

The ver.di services union organised further strike action among health workers on 10 and 11 October as a further step in its campaign to deal with massive staffing shortages across the sector. The union is looking to negotiate agreements to tackle overwork, excessive overtime and workers being called out at short notice to fill staffing gaps. Ver.di wants to see all workers take their proper breaks and ultimately the aim is for national legislation to set minimum staffing levels.

Members of the services union ver.di have taken strike action in three hospitals as part of the union's campaign to tackle excessive workloads in the sector. The targeted hospitals in Düsseldorf, Ottweiler in Saarland and Dachau, near Munich are respectively public, non-profit and private and ver.di says that none of the three employers has been willing to discuss a collective agreement to reduce workloads. In the meantime, health workers across Germany will be supporting the union's campaign to set limits on workloads and try to reduce the pressure on workers to skip their breaks, to be

The ver.di services union has negotiated a new agreement with the management of the university hospitals of the towns of Gießen and Marburg in the Hesse region in central Germany. This is a major success arising from the union's national campaign of protests and strikes calling for action on staffing in the sector. The agreement, covering 7000 workers, provides for the possibility of taking on new workers as well as creating a pool of workers who are in a position to cover short and long-term gaps in staffing. It also commits the management and union to negotiate over measures to address

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

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

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