2024-09-24 16:21:59
It’s about higher salaries and better working conditions for doctors. The union organized numerous rallies and a warning strike for this purpose.
Thousands of doctors demanded more money and better working conditions at a central rally of the Marburger Bund union in Frankfurt am Main. Participants used whistles and signs to draw attention to staff shortages and overwork. The union’s demands in the current wage negotiations have been on the table for months, said federal chairwoman Susanne Johna.
Johna accused the employers of procrastination and refusal. A negotiable offer must be presented at the next round of negotiations on Tuesday. “If anyone thinks they can burden us even more, we say: Not with us!” shouted Johna. Other speakers from the union’s collective bargaining committee threatened further industrial action, accompanied by lively applause.
According to its own information, the Marburger Bund counted around 3,000 participants at the rally on Frankfurt’s Römerberg, the police around 2,400. The doctors carried signs reading “Everything has an end, only the on-call service doesn’t” and “Doctors at their limit = patient in danger”. They traveled from several federal states, including Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg and Lower Saxony.
The union also organized a warning strike to get the negotiations moving. The Marburger Bund is demanding, among other things, 8.5 percent more pay per year for the 60,000 doctors and a reform of the regulations on shift work. The Association of Municipal Employers’ Associations criticized the warning strike one day before the next round of negotiations as completely excessive.
According to the doctors’ association, several thousand doctors took part in the nationwide warning strike. According to a spokesman, exact figures were not initially available. The focus of the strike was in the south of Germany. In Bavaria, for example, around 2,000 doctors from municipal hospitals took part in the all-day warning strike, according to an estimate by the Marburger Bund.
According to a union spokesman, around 700 doctors from Baden-Württemberg took part in the rally in Frankfurt. In the state itself, around 10,000 doctors at around 80 hospitals were called to a warning strike.