Doctors go to collective bargaining on confrontation

Marburger Bund negotiates the salaries of the approximately 55,000 doctors of the city hospitals and goes on confrontation course

At present, the large collective bargaining rounds take place in the civil service. Today, the medical union "Marburger Bund" is also negotiating with the Association of Local Employers' Associations (VKA). While the services union Verdi keep their demands discreet, the Marburger Bund goes on a confrontation course. The Doctors' Union demands from the VKA a wage increase of at least 5 percent. In addition, the hourly pay for the on-call services will be raised by around a third and the partial retirement will be extended. If these requirements were to be implemented, the hospitals would have to reckon with annual additional costs of around 300 million euros. The total volume of claims is around 8 percent.

The Marburger Bund represents the doctors since the year 2005. Previously, the union Verdi had led the negotiations for the doctors. But since the Marburger Bund has taken over the negotiations, could be designed from the perspective of doctors acceptable collective bargaining rounds. The Marburger Bund was always very offensive. This course is now to be continued with the new collective bargaining rounds.

The doctors can rightly claim that they are in a profitable bargaining position. A total of around 5,000 doctors are missing in the municipal hospitals. The working conditions for doctors are not exactly the best in Germany. Many doctors prefer to be self-employed and open their own practice or go to neighboring countries. The Marburger Bund claims that the aggressive struggle for rising salaries is also a struggle for more doctors in the municipal hospitals. "The goal of the collective bargaining round is to make the workplace more attractive to physicians in order to be able to remedy the shortage of clinicians in the long term," said deputy chief executive and negotiator of the Marburger Bund, Lutz Hammerschlag. However, it can be expected that the negotiations will be tough and long-lasting. (sb, 18.01.2010)