Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube

Strike at Berlin’s Largest Hospital

This Wednesday at 8am, workers at the Charité – Berlin’s biggest hospital with over 13,000 employees – are going on strike. They are fighting against poverty wages and outsourcing. International solidarity is needed!

Nathaniel Flakin

May 16, 2017
Facebook Twitter Share

Operations will be cancelled. Transports will be delayed for hours. The toilets will get filthier by the day. Yes, a hospital is going in strike.

The Charité, Berlin’s university hospital, belongs to the city’s public sector. But the service workers aren’t employed directly by the Charité. They work for a subsidiary called the Charité Facility Management (CFM). The CFM belongs to the hospital (51%) and to a consortium of service corporations (49%).

CFM workers aren’t covered by the collective bargaining agreement for the hospital. So these workers – in cleaning, security, transport, sterilization, maintenance, catering etc. – earn poverty wages, usually just above minimum wage. In addition, their contracts are often limited to one year.

The CFM was founded in 2006 as part of a massive cuts to wages in Berlin’s public sector. In 2011, CFM workers waged a heroic, 13-week strike demanding equal pay for equal work. But the leadership of their trade union, ver.di, ended the strike in exchange for empty promises. Nothing has changed. Crucially, ver.di had sabotaged the chance to have the service workers strike together with the Charité’s nurses.

Now, the CFM workers are relaunching their struggle for the principle: One company, one workforce, one collective bargaining agreement. Just about every public company in Berlin has its own low-wage subsidiary. So there are plenty of other workers to link up with.

The workers from Berlin’s Botanical Garden have proven that outsourcing can be beaten. Previously, some workers earned 40% less than others because they were employed by a wholly-owned subsidiary (also founded in 2006). But after a number of strikes, last December management agreed to pay the entire workforce equally. Six months later came the announcement that the subsidiary would be dissolved. Of course: What good is a subsidiary if it doesn’t pay significantly lower wages?

Unfortunately, ver.di is blocking attempts to link these different struggles. For example at Vivantes, Berlin’s second biggest hospital, there is an almost identical situation with its own service subsidiary, the VSG. For years, CFM and VSG workers have been clamoring for a joint strike, to pressure both hospitals at once. But the ver.di bureaucracy has refused to organize such an action, with no explanation.

The CFM strikers are already being attacked by the bourgeois press because they are supposedly endangering the safety of patients. But the exact opposite is the case: Budget cuts and lack of personell are putting people’s lives in danger. In the last five years, at least 150 people have died from “superbugs” that spread in Berlin’s hospitals because there is not enough money for hygiene.

The party Die Linke (The Left) sometimes speaks out against outsourcing, low wages and and precarious work. But Die Linke was in the Berlin government in 2006 when the CFM was created. Now they are in government again. Their only proposal for the workers is to wait for a hospital reform in 2019. But workers in poverty don’t have the same patience as highly-paid “left-wing” government ministers.

That’s why this strike needs our solidarity. Healthcare workers in New York City
have sent their greetings to their CFM colleagues. This is a great start! Trotskyists in Berlin, organized around the digital newspaper Klasse Gegen Klasse, will be doing everything to mobilize students and workers to support the CFM. Because this is a strike in the interest of every wage earner!

Facebook Twitter Share

Nathaniel Flakin

Nathaniel is a freelance journalist and historian from Berlin. He is on the editorial board of Left Voice and our German sister site Klasse Gegen Klasse. Nathaniel, also known by the nickname Wladek, has written a biography of Martin Monath, a Trotskyist resistance fighter in France during World War II, which has appeared in German, in English, and in French, and in Spanish. He has also written an anticapitalist guide book called Revolutionary Berlin. He is on the autism spectrum.

Instagram

Europe

Robert Habeck Wrote a Play Praising a Right-Wing Mass Murderer

Germany's Green vice chancellor strikes many as an idealist who has been struggling with the tough realities of government. Yet before he was a national politician, he wrote a play that opens a window into a dark soul.

Nathaniel Flakin

December 1, 2023

Fact Check: Did German Leftists Try to Bomb West Berlin’s Jewish Community Center in 1969?

Answer: No. The bombing was undertaken by West Germany’s domestic secret service, originally founded by Nazis.

Nathaniel Flakin

November 29, 2023
Tombstones in Germany defaced with Swasticas.

“Stop Thief!” The German State Attacks Migrants to Distract from Its Own Antisemitism

German politicians claim that antisemitism is an “imported problem.” Even a cursory look at the facts, however, shows that anti-Jewish hatred is not caused by pro-Palestinian protests. No, the source is German capitalism.

Nathaniel Flakin

November 21, 2023

Competing Rallies at Berlin’s Free University

On successive Fridays, there was a pro-Palestinian and a pro-Israeli rally at the Free University. One was dominated by international students, including many Jews and Palestinians, calling for solidarity — the other was dominated by German politicians spewing racism. Guess which was which.

Nathaniel Flakin

November 13, 2023

MOST RECENT

All That's Left, the podcast from Left Voice.

#AllThatsLeftPod: What the Historic UAW Victory Means for the Working Class

In this episode of the podcast, we discuss the historic UAW victory, its shortcomings, and the tasks for the future.

Left Voice

December 5, 2023

The New Hollywood McCarthyism Emerging Around Palestine

Over the past week, a new Hollywood McCarthyism has emerged: multiple people in Hollywood have jobs and representation over their support of Palestine. We must denounce and fight these attacks which weaken the movement and scare supporters into silence.

Sybil Davis

December 3, 2023
A UAW sign is held next to a "Free Palestine" sign

The UAW Has Called for a Ceasefire. It’s Time for All of Labor to Stand Up.

The UAW International union has joined calls for a ceasefire and is exploring how to divest from Israel. This is a step which should inspire union activists to take up the fight to bring their union into the fight against Israel's attack on Gaza and the struggle against imperialism.

Rose Lemlich

December 2, 2023

The World Kissinger Built Must Die Too

Henry Kissinger died at 100 years old. But his legacy remains in the brutal world system he built and the future generations of imperialist ghouls he inspired. They all must go.

Samuel Karlin

November 30, 2023