“If possible, a solution this week”

by time news

BerlinEnd of 2024 – Sylvia Bühler from the federal executive committee of the Verdi union does not want to wait that long. And certainly not the hundreds of employees who gathered in front of the Friedrichshain clinic early on Tuesday afternoon. They are nurses from the Charité and Vivantes, also employees of the subsidiaries. In a moment they will set off in a long train towards the Red City Hall, where the supervisory boards of the state-owned clinic groups will meet at 3:30 p.m. Including the Governing Mayor Müller and his Senator for Finance Matthias Kollatz, both SPD. And this meeting and the demonstration there are related to this very date: the end of 2024.

For this point in time, Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn has announced a law on staffing in German clinics. “We can no longer be put off,” says Sylvia Bühler. “That is why we use the instrument that we can influence ourselves. This is the collective agreement relief. ”At Charité they are closer to this contract than at Vivantes, where the trade unionists want to negotiate with management by Thursday morning in order to achieve a breakthrough. At the same time, we are fighting for a public service collective agreement (TVöD).

“We are well prepared for the upcoming round with the participation of experts from both sides,” said Meike Jäger, negotiator for the workers, on Tuesday at the beginning of the talks with Vivantes. “From Wednesday afternoon, collective bargaining could begin if the expert rounds, in which the minimum staffing on the ward and in the areas should go, are successful.” A written offer from the Charité on Tuesday should be the start of regular negotiations, it said in a statement von Verdi, “in order to find a solution to the collective bargaining conflict this week if possible.” The strike at the Charité buildings will be shut down “if the offer turns out to be negotiable as expected”.

Verdi makes health minister Jens Spahn responsible

Charité employees also showed up for the demonstration. A nurse from Campus Mitte talks about an experience at her picket line. A woman approached her and reported that her mother had just died in the intensive care unit and that she now wanted to support the strike. The woman gave 50 euros. Collection cans are now circling through the rows. The money is supposed to be for the strikers of the subsidiaries. You can quickly collect more than 500 euros.

Meanwhile, Sylvia Bühler talks about Federal Minister of Health Jens Spahn (CDU) and the personnel assessment tool that is to take effect in four years. The Verdi health expert reports a written request from her union, sent this week to the minister, to “influence his house, that the Verdi union must be involved in the development of a staffing tool from the start”. Because unlike the previous model, the PPR 2.0, the employees are not involved in the development this time, and neither is the German Nursing Council. PPR 2.0 never came into force.

The German Hospital Society (DKG), the National Association of Health Insurance Funds (GKV) and the private insurance industry are to be mandated by law to develop a “scientifically based procedure for the uniform assessment of nursing staff requirements”. This is what it says in an amendment by the coalition groups to the Health Care Further Development Act. After all, it is the health insurers that have financed each additional nursing home for direct patient care since last year, regardless of the flat-rate case fees for which they are already responsible.

Direct patient care – that is the keyword for a nurse from the Friedrichshain Clinic. “We need more bedside staff,” he says. There are two options, he says: “Either leave the job or fight for better working conditions from within the system.”

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