Germany's Public Sector Workers Go on Strike
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Several regional airports, kindergartens, and schools were closed on Wednesday ahead of a third round of wage talks. |
Teachers, police, and other civil servants in Germany went
on strike on Wednesday to press for any compromise on their collective demands.
Hospitals in several German provinces have announced a two-day strike on
Thursday and Friday.
Public Sector Workers Strikes in Germany
Hundreds of thousands of public sector workers across
Germany went on strike on Wednesday, closing schools, daycare centers, and
administrative offices in federal states such as Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg. Trade
unions say more
than 10,000 civil servants took part in the strike in Berlin alone, with
many marching to the city's famous Brandenburg Gate to demand better pay and
better working conditions.
Provincial Administration Officials
The strike included teachers, daycare workers, policemen,
firefighters, and provincial administration officials. Because they won't be
able to continue
living in the city where they work, it is evident that our coworkers have
expectations," a representative for the trade union 'Vairdi' said in
Berlin.
Three German Cities
Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen are three German cities, which
are also federal states and commonly known as “city-states”. Two rounds of
negotiations between public sector employees and representatives of the federal
German states as employers have so far been completed on workers' demands,
but no progress has been made.
Nationwide Negotiations
Andrea Kühnemann, Verdi's regional director for the states
of Berlin and Brandenburg, said, "The federal states did not make any
offers to the workers regarding their
wages and working conditions during the two rounds of nationwide negotiations.
It is tantamount to disrespecting public sector workers.”
German hospital workers strike
Hospital workers in the federal German states of North
Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Lower Saxony, and
Schleswig-Holstein announced on Wednesday that they would go on a two-day
warning strike on Thursday and Friday. This move
will affect government hospitals as well as special psychiatry wards as
protests have been planned in almost every city on Thursday, November 23.
Trade unions representing employees in the German federal
states of Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg are demanding a 10.5 percent increase in
workers' salaries, as well as a 300-euro
city-state bonus per worker. The next round of negotiations regarding these
demands will be held on December 7 and 8.
German Health Laws
Pharmacists in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg also took part
in the strike and closed their work on Wednesday. However, they did not make
any new collective demands for themselves, rather the strike was a protest
against changes in German
health laws. New healthcare laws will force drugmakers to make payments into
workers' health insurance funds, threatening to cut into their business
profits.
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