Germany
The ver.di services union organised a protest on 11 June to highlight the problems arising from major staff shortages in the Berlin regional government's finance department. The union points out that funds are urgently needed to develop childcare and maintain streets and parks and that the staff shortages mean that millions of euros in tax revenue are going uncollected.
Read more at > ver.di (DE)
The LBC-NVK public service union is organising monthly strike action at the social care organisation Broeders van Liefde. The staffing shortage in the organisation is so bad that some workers are doing more than 300 hours of overtime a year. The union says that an additional 500 jobs were promised in 2009 but nothing has come of that commitment. The monthly actions will continue until there is an adequate response from the employers and other protest activities will also be organised. [Read more at > LBC-NVK (NL)->http://lbc-nvk.acv-online.be/sectoren/non_profit/actueel/2011/02012010_Nonprofit
The FOA public services union has criticised the government for failing to come up with any concrete and urgent measures to tackle the shortage of health and social care staff particularly in eldercare. The government announced a major mapping exercise in July last year that was aimed at identifying the challenges facing municipalities. The resulting report adds little to the facts and figures that the unions have produced over the years to warn of the scale of staff shortages. The FOA also argues that the promised DKK 150 million (EUR 20 million) to help boost recruitment is inadequate, being
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.
