Healthcare | Charité: Verdi has a vote on forced strikes

Union secretary Neunhöffer in 2025 at one of the many strike rallies for the reintegration of the Charité Service subsidiary CFM Photo: Verdi Berlin-Brandenburg According to your union, a relief collective agreement at the Charité has contributed to an increase in staff of over 1,000 people and thus to better staffing levels. Now the clinic management has terminated the collective agreement. They want to preserve it. How can this be achieved?

The Charité board says the collective agreement can no longer be financed. Therefore, essential elements should be changed so that they are no longer effective. A lot of colleagues are not prepared to accept that. They want to defend their collective agreement, are reorganizing themselves en masse in the union and are ready to take to the streets. We are talking about almost 900 new entries as part of the dispute.

But what does it take to ultimately conclude an equivalent collective agreement?

The Charité must acknowledge the necessity of this collective agreement. It is up to the clinic itself how much it costs. Because if the colleagues are not exposed to any stress, are not understaffed and do not experience violence, the collective agreement costs nothing. Of course, the additional staff costs money, but they are needed to provide good patient care. We also expect the state, as the sponsor, to send clear signals to the Charité that this collective agreement is still desirable.

Gisela Neunhöffer is leading the negotiations on the relief collective agreement at the Charité. At Verdi she is deputy head of the health, social services, education and science department in Berlin and Brandenburg.

The contract was terminated at the end of April. So far there is no agreement in sight. The dispute over the scope of emergency services during warning strikes is being fought out in court. Will we possibly see a longer enforced strike before Christmas?

That can very well be. Both sides want a tariff solution before the end of the year. However, since we still see too little willingness to continue the collective agreement with the current quality, we have initiated the strike vote and are very sure that our colleagues will speak out in favor of a forced strike.

The State Labor Court has set staffing levels during a warning strike at around 85 percent of normal operations. What does this do to the right to strike, and how does it affect employees' decisions to organize in a union?

The colleagues are extremely angry about this decision because the Charité made the court believe that practically all patient care must be maintained, in some cases with more people there than in everyday life. We still have strike power, but strike effectiveness is limited. Previous strikes have shown that things can be done differently, and this can also be seen in other situations.

Between Christmas and New Year's Eve, the Charité reduces normal operations to around 60 percent, and there are only emergency operations on the weekends. Nobody is saying that this puts patients at risk. Courts have to decide very complex and responsible questions in a very short time. But a judge is not a doctor. Making them answer these questions is not right.

However, it also does not seem practical to allow the parties to the conflict to arrange emergency services. The employers rely on the fundamental right to life and integrity, the union on the right to strike.

Our colleagues would never endanger patients, which means we base our emergency service suggestions on patient safety. A concept is needed that links the right to strike and patient safety. It makes no sense to go to court every time there is a warning strike. It would make sense to have a model emergency service agreement that employers and unions negotiate, perhaps with mediation, and which determines in which areas staff and treatments can be reduced.

This worked for a long time at the Charité, but by 2021 at the latest, the clinic management abandoned this path, perhaps because the impact of the strike was too great for them. However, the Charité has not yet proven a single specific case of patient danger. The economic impact was noticeable. But that is the essence of the strike. In the debate this is repeatedly mixed up with endangering patients, which I find unfair.

At the Charité, the union is negotiating with an entire management department and is arguing with lawyers in court. For employees who deal with it at the end of the day, it is difficult to understand what is happening there. How do you still include them?

People understand very well what is happening. You see in everyday life what reductions are possible if they are wanted from above - and that they are not wanted in industrial disputes. They treat the right to strike very responsibly. We have repeatedly sent strikers into service when it was necessary for patient safety. It is important that their rights are respected. Otherwise you will create extreme frustration.

The collective relief agreement from 2015 was a model that 25 public hospitals emulated. A reversal would probably have a similar signaling effect. How do you classify that?

The cause is the general conditions, which the federal government has massively worsened with several changes to the law. Among other things, regulations make it more difficult to refinance collective agreements. A lot of money was taken from hospitals in order to indirectly reduce their numbers. But employees are not prepared to let this crisis unfold on their backs. The economic pressure on hospitals with a wide range of care is igniting in companies as a conflict over good patient care and working conditions.

The German healthcare system is considered too expensive. Which reforms are moving in the right direction?

Karl Lauterbach had announced that he would de-economize the health system. That would have been right. But his reform didn't achieve that. The financing provided there through maintenance costs would be correct because a hospital like the fire department simply has to be there, regardless of whether eight or twelve patients come today. However, the introduced maintenance costs do not achieve this because they are again linked to the number and complexity of the treatments.

The reforms put the cart before the horse: They try to use market mechanisms to regulate what needs to be decided politically, namely what needs there are today and in the future and how we cover them financially and with personnel. Such an approach would significantly simplify the financing system.

If the political framework dictates so much, why are you still a trade unionist?

Conditions for healthcare workers have improved because unions put pressure on them, not because politicians came up with the idea on their own. The employees fought for the relief collective agreements. The subsidiaries of Vivantes and Charité have achieved improvements. However, they haven't been reintegrated yet, probably because we still haven't pushed enough.

Let's assume that the Left, the Greens and the SPD form the future state government: What definitely needs to be included in the coalition agreement?

Health policy is a social service of general interest and must play a central role. We finally need the daughters of Vivantes and Charité to be repatriated in a watertight manner. This has been promised for 15 or 20 years and all parties that want to form a coalition have promised it. And we need a commitment to continue and expand the relief collective agreements. Enough staff for good health care should not be a question of the economic situation.

A group of experts from the old Senate considered the repatriation unaffordable. The scope in the household has not increased.

This is a question of priorities. You can't promise it in the election campaign and then not do it. There also needs to be a commitment to an action plan for the hospitals that need it in existential crises. During the last legislative period, the Senate watched as the Jewish Hospital - one of the oldest institutions of Jewish life in Berlin - was sold off to a foreign investor. Something like this must not happen again.

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