Equal pay for equal work!

For several weeks now, non-medical staff, including canteen, garden, security, transport, logistics, cleaning and technical workers at Charité Facility Management (CFM) in Berlin, a subsidiary of Charité university hospital, the largest in Germany, have been on strike. After the strike was suspended for several days for negotiations, which proved fruitless, it is now continuing. The workers’ concerns are more than justified. They are fighting against ‘wage dumping’ – being outsourced to a subsidiary which has placed them outside the public sector collective agreement, allowing the employer to legally pay them less than workers employed directly by Charité, even though CFM is itself owned by the Berlin state government. In some cases outsourced CFM workers earn 600-700 euros less per month for the same work.

Scandalous behaviour by the CFM management and the Berlin Senate

For years and in a total of three coalition contracts, the Berlin state government – the Berlin Senate – has promised the colleagues a return to Charité and thus reintegration into the public service collective agreement. However, except for empty phrases from politicians, nothing has happened since then.

The response of the CFM colleagues was therefore: strike! But at the beginning of the strike, the CFM management showed what kind of dirty tricks it was willing to use in order to continue cutting costs on the backs of the workers. It tried to ban the strike through the courts, but this was unsuccessful. However, it did manage to get the court to approve an “emergency service agreement” (minimum staff levels) for the strike, which in some cases is higher than normal staff levels. But this has not changed the colleagues’ willingness to strike – on the contrary: week after week, they are setting new strike participation records!

It took five rounds of negotiations to get the management to make a more than inadequate offer, which was rejected by the colleagues without hesitation. Another negotiation meeting was cancelled by the management one day before it was scheduled to take place. The colleagues responded with a spontaneous demonstration of 150-200 people in front of the government building.

Support the CFM workers!

The signal that a successful strike would send should not be underestimated. In some recent rounds of collective bargaining, we believe that the full potential for struggle was not used, or strikes were even completely abandoned. A success at CFM would show that more democratic participation by colleagues has a positive effect on the willingness to strike and on membership recruitment, and that if you fight, you can win—even in times of austerity policies by pro-capitalist parties.

But for this to happen, solidarity with the colleagues at CFM is necessary—especially internationally. When reading out messages of support, the colleagues were especially happy to hear messages of international solidarity. These show even more that the colleagues are not fighting an isolated battle, that they are not alone in facing these problems, and that their struggle is seen as important beyond the Charité campus and across national borders.

Therefore, everyone is invited to write a message of solidarity to Berlin which would be deeply appreciated.

Please send them to cs@solidaritaet.info so as Sol we can forward them and pass them on to the striking workers at the picket lines.

Hoch die internationale Solidarität! (Long live international solidarity!)