After weeks of wrangling, the University Hospital Gießen and Marburg (UKGM) and the Verdi union agreed on Friday evening on a collective agreement to secure jobs and relieve the privatized hospital. This was announced by Verdi union secretary Fabian Dzewas-Rehm. “The relief for the employees of the university hospital is coming. Their enormous willingness to go on strike has moved the employer to a good compromise,” he said.
According to the union spokesman, the first nationwide relief collective agreement in a commercially operated hospital includes, among other things, shift-specific personnel specifications for wards and functional areas. In the case of special strains such as assignments outside of the specialist area or physical assaults, there should be a load equalization. In other areas such as laboratories or technology, 102 new full-time positions are to be created. In addition, the protection against operational redundancies and outsourcing now also applies to the approximately 300 employees of UKGM Service GmbH, as it was said.
The labor dispute, in which, according to Verdi, around 1,000 UKGM employees have been taking part every day since March 27, will end on Saturday when early shift begins. Further details of the agreement are expected to be presented on Monday.
On Friday morning, the directors of the clinics had appealed to the collective bargaining partners to agree on a suspension of the strike. The strike endangers medical care, they said. “An increasingly intolerable situation is developing at the university hospitals in Gießen and Marburg, because the number of patients who cannot be treated is increasing and it is often not possible to transfer them to other hospitals.” Student training is also suffering.
In essence, the demands of the union were about relief for the more than 7,000 non-medical employees of the clinic: Among other things, a minimum staffing for the shifts of the individual areas was required. If this falls below, the employees should collect stress points, which can be compensated in free time.
In 2006, 95 percent of the university hospital, which was spread over two locations, was taken over by Rhön-Klinikum AG, which has meanwhile been bought by the hospital group Asklepios. The state of Hesse holds the remaining five percent. A total of around 9600 people work here.
Lengthy negotiations about the future and financial resources of the hospital between the state of Hesse and the private majority owner were wrapped up in February: According to this, the hospital is to receive 850 million euros in investment funds over the next ten years.
