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Job advertisements in the “Oberlausitzer Kurier”: 126 alleged requests from health care workers
Photo: via www.imago-images.de / imago images/Andre Lenthe
They describe themselves as "unvaccinated and unpredictable" or "vaccine-free" and are looking for a "new sphere of activity": Alleged nurses who are currently flooding some German newspapers with job advertisements. From mid-March - so the tenor - they could no longer work in their current position. Then the institution-related vaccination obligation applies to clinic and nursing staff. Employees must prove that they have been vaccinated against Corona or have recovered from Corona.
The accumulation of similar advertisements now arouses suspicion. Several media and journalists reported that most of the advertisers could not be reached by telephone, had left impersonal absence messages or hung up immediately. There is a suspicion that there could be at least some false reports behind which there are concerted actions by opponents of compulsory corona vaccination or vaccinations in general. You could try to give the impression that compulsory vaccination for nurses will throw the sector into chaos.
For example, the "Franconian Day" (Bamberg) recorded more than 50 advertisements on Saturday.
»This accumulation of similar advertisements is unusual.
At first glance, that almost seemed as if it had been agreed upon," said Gerhard Staudt, team leader of order management at Mediengruppe Oberfranken.
Mobile number 0160-1234567890
The Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) also reported at the weekend about "more than 100 supposed job applications in a Bautzen advertising paper".
RBB journalist Andreas Rausch described in the report that he tried to reach some of the 126 advertisers on Saturday.
Three-quarters of the ads have mobile phone numbers, some have landline numbers, and the rest have ciphers.
The journalist writes that some numbers are incomplete or, like "0160-1234567890", not assigned, or that nobody answers the phone.
He makes 18 attempts but gets no one.
The "Frankish Day" reported that in a Bamberg chat group of opponents of the corona measures, unvaccinated nurses were called on to "flood" the newspaper with job advertisements.
However, there is no irrefutable evidence of a connection to the accumulation of similar-sounding advertisements.
According to the report, the newspaper nevertheless suspects that the advertising section of the newspaper “could have turned into a field of socio-political debate about compulsory vaccination”.
In the past few days, some media had reported on the ads without raising the suspicion of a coordinated action.
"Many nurses are looking for a new job with advertisements from March 16th," the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper headlined an article on January 18th.
The Bayerischer Rundfunk added a contribution later with the indication that there were doubts about the authenticity of the job advertisements.
However, there are actually many people in the care industry who are looking for new employment.
The job portal Stepstone reported that in a recent study in December and January, 42 percent of employees in care said that they were looking for a new job.
In most cases, there should not be a vaccination requirement behind it: the majority of employees in hospitals and care facilities are vaccinated.
However, many jobs in the industry are considered extremely hard, especially in times of the pandemic, and numerous nurses feel underpaid.
nis/dpa