Berlin – “We are not ready to write any wage figures into the collective agreement, because we are burdening other professional groups – including doctors and administrative staff,” said Carla Eysel, Head of Personnel and Nursing at Charité, on Wednesday about the strike of the nursing staff in Berlin. Since last Thursday, the two largest Verdi clinic groups have been on strike in the capital with the aim of achieving relief contracts for employees.
So far, things have been very busy: Vivantes had declared last week that the labor dispute was an acute danger to human life. Doctors had written a public letter in which they described the distress of the patients. At Vivantes alone, 1000 beds would have to be deregistered, and the care of emergency, stroke, heart and palliative patients is no longer feasible and poses major problems for the Vivantes clinics. Verdi defended himself against this and let it be known: It is not the strike that endangers human lives, but the normal state of the wards even before the strike.
Does the emergency care work or not?
Now, for the first time, the Charité has made a public statement on the current strike. When asked about the emergency care, Eysel said that it worked well at the Charité despite strikes – via the so-called clearing houses. There it is decided on individual cases whether they are emergencies and therefore employees from the strike would have to switch to patient care. That is time-consuming, but “our people have had practice with strikes,” says Eysel. She also expressed understanding for the strikers, because care had never been fundamentally reformed in the past few decades, the Charité respected the right to strike and had also influenced the wards to ensure that this could be implemented. There are 20 intensive and 152 normal wards under the umbrella of the Charité. The nursing staff would receive around 2,400 to 4,800 euros gross wages.
Different tones were heard on Wednesday from Verdi. Thomas Pottgießer, for example, now receives a lot of mail. The nurse belongs to the clearing house at Vivantes. The mail comes from management and the letters accuse the strikers of knowingly endangering the lives of individual patients. “We call on the Vivantes management to refrain from making these allegations,” said Pottgießer at a Verdi press conference.
In the struggle for better working conditions for nurses at the Berlin state clinics, the fronts are hardening. Vivantes accuses the employees of negligently jeopardizing the patient’s welfare. The employees and their union accuse the management of not moving in the negotiations and of undermining the strike. Among other things: “Cases are declared as emergencies that occur in the same way or worse in normal operation,” says Pfleger Pottgießer, holding up a large pile of e-mails.
Are the strike measures being undermined or supported?
He only received a letter from the regional coordinator of the Neukölln Clinic on Wednesday morning. He had previously called for recourse because the staff at Ward 35 is said to have endangered a patient with their strike. In the morning email, the coordinator regretted having made a mistake. The station had not even been striked at the time in question. “Please take note of the correction message, thank you very much,” reads Pottgießer.
Normal operations endanger human lives, not the strike – Pottgießer and colleagues see evidence of this in Neukölln’s own goal. Ulla Hedemann is an intensive care nurse at the Charité and currently works in the clearing house and explains that the situation during the strike is often even better because specially trained staff are assigned for certain emergencies. In the delivery room, for example, it could happen in everyday life that a specialist first had to be requested. “During the strike, the colleague is present in the area from the start.”
Verdi wants to substantiate her criticism that both Vivantes and Charité would systematically circumvent the strike. Of the 4,707 nurses at the Charité, around 450 are on strike every day. The university clinic has 3001 beds, about 1000 Verdi actually wants to strike, but actually there are only about 250. A total of 36 wards should be on strike, only nine are currently affected, not a single one is completely closed. Vivantes employs 4,882 nurses, around 800 strike per day. 5856 beds are otherwise looked after. Of these, 1250 were supposed to be on strike, 700 are now in reality. Of the 255 stations, 41 should take part in the strike, 17 are currently. Verdi has completely signed off 13, five are actually closed.
“We have individual stations where the willingness to strike is so high that they have to be closed,” says Hedemann. “We registered these wards in good time, but the patients are not being relocated.” So wait out an emergency service. The intensive care nurse says that qualifications for a position are always given during the strike. In times when there are no strikes, however, it happens “that female colleagues have to help out with certain tasks for which they have no additional training”.
The strikers said on Wednesday that the labor dispute would also undermine where the state-owned corporations primarily generate their income: in the operating theaters. Nurse Pottgießer tells about the Urban Hospital, where cancer patients would have had to wait for their interventions. “We have agreed that more tumor surgeries can be done,” he says. “However, many elective operations are now also being carried out.”
Meanwhile, negotiations for a collective agreement discharge continue to stall. Verdi requires a point system for cases of understaffing. Three points therefore equate to one working day’s time off. The Charité, on the other hand, wants to pay money to compensate. Meike Jäger scaled down the offer. The Verdi negotiator says: “If the staff falls below the limits, the Charité will only pay ten euros.”
What does the Charité offer nursing staff?
On Wednesday, Carla Eysel explained the offer the Charité had entered into negotiations with at the beginning of August – and then wondered why Verdi had unpacked the pipes and called for a strike. The offer envisages “four pillars for the future of the health professions at the Charité”. Among other things, 350 additional nurses are to be hired in three years, stability services with attractive additional remuneration are to be introduced and more individual working time models are to be created, and duty roster security is to be increased. The specific workload of the nursing staff should be specifically evaluated and – similar to Vivantes – scientifically monitored. An individual, shift-specific determination of the necessary relief, a financial relief system and psychosocial support for the intensive care staff are to be provided, and training is to be improved – in particular, the induction of trainees.
If you ask the strikers in front of the Charité what they think of these plans, they waved them off: “We are not striking here because we want more money, but because we can no longer”, says Johanna Hopp, a young intensive care nurse at the Charité.
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