Nurses in Cologne: “We are on strike for the whole of society”
The nursing strike at the university clinics in North Rhine-Westphalia is already in its fifth week. More than 1,500 strikers and supporters came to Cologne for the big day of strikes on Wednesday, June 1st. The day of the strike was an expression of their determination to fight until something really changed in their unbearable working conditions.
The last few years have been the last straw. In the corona pandemic, the “profit before life” policy, which had already caused a nursing shortage, brought the health system close to collapse. Since then, the federal and state governments have not relieved the nursing staff, but decided on a special fund of 100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr.
In Cologne, the nursing staff described the conditions under which they have been working practically at the limit for the past two and a half years.
Marie, who works as a night nurse in the oncology department at Aachen University Hospital, reported that she alone was responsible for 32 patients. “Unfortunately that’s normal for us.” Rebecca from Cologne said: “In nursing, ten, eleven or 14 days are written in a row. In the case of operations, the question is not, ‘Is that necessary?’, but: ‘Will it bring in money?’ People are eliminated without being healthy. That is inhumane (…) There should be much, much more money for the care!”
Several stations at the Cologne University Hospital are “understaffed and underpaid,” reported Jannis, a physiotherapist who gets around a lot in the hospital. There “everyone is running, everyone is energized”. “My colleagues are finished,” said Kirsten, who has been a specialist in an intensive care unit for 30 years. “Some resigned during the corona pandemic. You have to constantly work at the limit; now they’re gone.” The nurses work “under maximum workload,” said the nurse, which doesn’t go well in the long run.
On the day of the strike, the posters read: “Breathless through the shift until the care collapses”, “Come in and burn out” or: “Please die slowly, we don’t have time”.
“The way we are currently working does not do justice to the patients or to us,” said nurse Maurizio. “It’s been like this for many years, but Corona has once again made it clear to everyone. Now is the perfect moment to do something about it effectively.”
Maurizio works at a gastroenterology (internal medicine) station. He reported that seniors from nursing homes are often delivered dehydrated and in poor general health. This shows that nursing conditions are just the tip of the iceberg. “It’s like a rat’s tail,” said Maurizio, “even the care in the nursing home is overloaded.” According to the nurse, the pandemic was “accompanied by a lot of losses”, both professionally and privately. “We work in the danger area, had to record our private contacts, and still have additional workload with tests and swabs.”
Many say: “We stand here for the whole of society.” After all, everyone can get sick. Indeed, the nursing strike enjoys great popularity among working people.
The media are doing their utmost to hide and belittle the strike. It has been holding out for more than four weeks now and is causing two-thirds of the operating rooms to be closed and massive failures at all six university hospitals in North Rhine-Westphalia – Aachen, Bonn, Düsseldorf, Essen, Cologne and Münster. Despite this, the media reported only very sparsely on this day of the strike.
Despite all this, more people than expected came to Cologne on Wednesday. Colleagues from the outpatient department, physiotherapy and massage, the laboratory, the service staff, from the day care center and kitchen, transport and logistics, but also supporters who do not work at a university clinic also demonstrated with the nurses.
The service union Verdi had apparently expected fewer participants. The rally location had to be moved from Friesenplatz to the larger Heumarkt at short notice. There, the interesting contributions come from speakers who are not professional trade unionists, while the official functionaries fueled loud whistles and chanted again and again: “TV-E – for us in NRW”.
“TV-E” means the tariff relief agreement on which Verdi is currently concentrating all of its demands. “It’s not about the money,” Verdi union secretary Jan von Hagen told WDR in the morning.
Anyone who works in the healthcare sector knows that falling wages are the main reason for understaffing, along with increasing workloads. In order to achieve real relief, the workforce would have to be at least doubled and wages would have to be increased immediately by at least 20 percent just to offset inflation. The Socialist Equality Party raised these demands in its call for the formation of independent action committees.
As the appeal states, “Under today’s conditions, the entire collective bargaining agreement that Verdi is negotiating is not worth the paper it’s written on. Its sole purpose is to quell the anger of those accepted and to continue the policy of cuts.” The union is deliberately isolating the nursing strike: it has given the state government a firm promise not to extend the strikes.
Concentrating on TV relief allows Verdi to distract from the wage cut that the union helped to decide on in the clinics last year. At that time, the service union had negotiated a collective agreement between the federal states (TV-L), which provided for 2.8 percent wage increases – but only from December 2022! – provides. Until then, there will be zero rounds for a whole year, and that with ongoing, constantly rising inflation.
All this fuels great dissatisfaction among the strikers. In Cologne, Kirsten, the intensive care nurse, said: “The negotiations are not taking place the way we want them to. They always say there will be negotiations, but they don’t negotiate at all. They want us to stop striking – and that’s not possible.”
Trainee Felix said: “Verdi is leading the negotiations, but keeping the whole thing low.” With a view to inflation, last year’s wage agreement was “ridiculous and sad”. He thinks it “pretty sucks how this goes,” Felix, who specifically mentioned that the armor is the focus.
For Jannis, the physiotherapist from Cologne, the last collective bargaining agreement is “quite perverse” in view of the inflation. Verdi is currently keeping the question of wages out of the strike. Jannis: “We were taught during our studies that we shouldn’t undersell ourselves. That should always be a cornerstone.” When the discussion came about the Bundeswehr’s 100 billion special fund, Jannis laughed and said: “There have been savings here for years. That’s where people die. And then Scholz did it overnight in a speech on the subject and decided it.”
The nurse Miriam said to the special fund: “We were all very surprised that there is money for it, but not for us and not for education either.” It is a topic that concerns everyone, as she finds it. “Not just the nurses, but the whole of society should be here with us.”
“It just can’t be,” said Kilian from the Cologne University Hospital, “that we are one of the richest countries in the world and the conditions in the hospitals are so bad. That can not be true. The Bundeswehr gets 100 billion euros; no one cares about maintenance. Any one of us can get sick, can get cancer. We demand care for the patients, but also for us.”
Kilian attended the strike day with Laureen, and she added: “We just don’t want to be burned out later.” Both treat seriously ill cancer patients, as they reported: “We treat people who are dying. This is also a psychological burden. We wish they had the time to do that, but we just don’t have it.”
A sign read: “100 billion for the Bundeswehr – zero for care”. In addition, Ute, who has been looking after the daycare center at the University Hospital in Cologne for years, said she was really happy to see this sign. “How can it be that all the money is now available for the Bundeswehr, and for all these years we have always been told that there is no money?! That makes me so angry.”
It was the first time in her life that she was taking part in a strike, Ute reported. “There has to be a stop in our society. You have to make a point. That’s why I’m going here.” Unfortunately, the work has deteriorated enormously and is in danger of degenerating into assembly line work. Ute thought that since the corona pandemic it had become increasingly clear that something had to change in society as a whole.
The proposal by the Socialist Equality Party to withdraw Verdi’s negotiating mandate and set up his own independent action committee was also the subject of lively discussion. Felix, the trainee, reported that the news of the sell-out of the service union in social and educational services gave the strikers food for thought.
He said: “On our first day of negotiations, we heard that they had reached an agreement. That was a bad sign for us.” According to Felix, his main concern is not to support the war and the armaments industry. He found the proposal to set up independent action committees important, and he said: “Setting up your own committee in the health sector – I think that’s good, I’m committed to it.”
how to die World Socialist Web Site As reported several times, nurses in the USA, Sri Lanka and many other countries have already organized themselves into independent action committees. The first of the university hospitals in NRW should join these international colleagues.
take Contact the SGP on! She supports the establishment of independent action committees and helps in establishing international contacts with beneficiaries in other countries. send one Whatsapp message to the following number: +491633378340 or register using the form.