University clinics: Extension of the offer for employees

Created: 06/29/2022, 17:03

The demonstrators from the university clinics gather in front of the DGB building in Düsseldorf.

© Malte Krudewig/dpa/archive image

In the month-long dispute with the employees about a collective bargaining agreement, the six affected university hospitals in North Rhine-Westphalia have improved and expanded their offer.

With the offered further increase in staff in nursing, the staff ratios of the clinics would “reach a very high level” in a European comparison, the university clinics announced on Wednesday.

Dusseldorf – You wanted to bring the collective agreement relief “to a positive conclusion as quickly as possible”.

For the transitional period until new staffing levels are reached, employers are offering immediate and unconditional workload compensation for all bedside nurses and employees “in patient-related areas”.

Specifically, they should be able to take up to seven additional days off per year.

The proposals would be extended to other professional groups and areas of activity that work in a similarly close relationship to the patient, for example in the operating room, the emergency room or in cardiac catheter laboratories.

“We have significantly developed our offer during the negotiations.

Anyone who works in the care of a North Rhine-Westphalian university clinic could therefore be sure in the future that there are no better regulations in other hospitals, ”said Andrea Schmidt-Rumposch, Director of Nursing at the University Medicine Essen.

The clinics have no understanding that the Verdi union is insisting on a bureaucratic, standardized model for other clinics and is continuing the strike with undiminished severity.

The massive effects on patient care can no longer be communicated and are "disproportionate to the status of the constructive discussions".

The NRW state parliament had previously cleared the way for the desired collective bargaining agreement to be relieved.

With the votes of the new black-green coalition and the SPD and AfD parliamentary groups, the plenum decided on Wednesday to change the NRW Higher Education Act.

The change in the law provides the legal basis for the university hospitals to withdraw from the employers' association of the federal states (AdL) and conduct independent collective bargaining with Verdi.

dpa