The strike at the university clinics in North Rhine-Westphalia ends after eleven weeks. The collective bargaining committee of the Verdi services union agreed on Tuesday to the agreement reached with the employers the night before, as Verdi announced. The collective agreement will be introduced at the beginning of next year. The industrial action affected the university hospitals in Aachen, Bonn, Düsseldorf, Essen, Cologne and Münster. Verdi called on the employers’ association of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia to conclude a “collective agreement for relief”.
“It’s done: The first collective agreement for ‘relief’ at hospitals in Germany has been enforced,” said Verdi’s state department head for health, social affairs, education and science, Katharina Wesenick, on Tuesday evening. “After 77 days of strike, the clinic employees have achieved this important success in solidarity and uprightness. The strikers have not been impressed by legal attempts to prohibit them or by the employers’ repeated attempts at negotiation.”
With the strike, Verdi wanted to get more staff at the clinics. In addition, the union called for equalization of the burden when there are too few staff and better training at the hospitals.
