Public sector workers are set to go on strike across Germany from next week, as unions seek to increase pressure in an ongoing wage dispute.
Authorities and university clinics are to be particularly affected, the leader of the Verdi union Frank Werneke said, announcing the strike action after a failed second round of negotiations on Friday.
Verdi and the dbb civil servants’ association are demanding a 7% pay raise, with a minimum increase of €300 ($347) for some 2.2 million workers employed by Germany’s federal states.
Despite repeated requests, the employer side failed to present a binding offer, Werneke said, urging all workers to follow the call to strike.
A first round of negotiations ended without agreement in December, after Hamburg’s Senator for Finance Andreas Dressel, representing the federal states, rejected the demands as unaffordable.
Labour representatives say that the increase is justified to compensate for high inflation seen over the past years. They also argue that increasing wages will help to boost Germany’s ailing economy and make the public sector more attractive for skilled workers.
In a bid to increase pressure, public servants began to go on strike over the past weeks, affecting kindergartens in Berlin and hospitals and universities in Bavaria, for example.
“The trade unions clearly need to increase the pressure and massively expand the strike action,” said dbb chief Volker Geyer, signalling that disruptions are likely to continue until the last round of negotiations scheduled for February 11-13.
Employer representative Dressel said he was optimistic an agreement could be reached next month.
Both sides shared a sense of “political responsibility” and progress had been made on several points “despite major differences,” he said following Friday’s talks in Potsdam, just outside Berlin.