In May and June 2025 around 600 to 700 workers employed by Charité Facility Management (CFM) went on strike for equal pay. The CFM is a subsidiary of the public hospital Charite.The company employs a total of 3,000 workers as hospital porters, cleaners, kitchen and canteen, sterilisation and maintenance workers. The CFM workers have a separate collective agreement, which allows management to pay them up to 20% less than the other hospital workers who are part of the public sector collective contract. There has been a long struggle by CFM workers against this division – both left parties and the trade union Ver.di, played a problematic role.

Years of betrayal

In 2006, the federal state government of Berlin of the SPD (Social Democratic Party, ‘Labour Party’) and PDS (today ‘Die Linke’, ‘The Left Party’, ‘socialists’) decided to outsource CFM in order to save money – the public hospital Charite, and thereby the state government, still owns 51% of CFM and has therefore maintained its influence over the dispute over outsourcing. 

In 2011, during the public sector strike led by Ver.di, the trade union decided to call off and settle a strike of 10,000 Charite university hospital workers who were employed on public sector contracts. This left the strike of the CFM workers, which was also led by Ver.di, in an isolated situation. Since then the CFM workers not only had lower basic pay, they were also excluded from various extra payments (holiday, shift premiums etc.). During the time of high inflation a couple of years ago, they were given a one-off payment of 116 Euro. In real terms though, their wages have not increased over the last five years. This increased the resolve of the CFM workers to continue fighting.

The coalition government of the SPD, Die Linke and the Green Party, which governed from 2016 to 2023, promised to reintegrate the outsourced services into the Charité public sector hospital, but never fulfilled that promise. Neither did the current CDU (Tory) and SPD coalition government…

The current strike

On the 2nd of April an indefinite strike for equal pay started, 99.3% of trade union members had voted in favour – around half of the 3,000 CFM workers are union members and around 600 to 700 took part in the strike. During that time there were various public sector strikes going on in Berlin, amongst others of public transport workers. These strikes were also led by Ver.di, but they were settled through arbitration by the politicians Matthias Platzeck (SPD) und Bodo Ramelow (Die Linke) and there was no organised attempt to link them up with the CFM hospital dispute. Inside the hospital, nurses and other directly employed workers took up some of the tasks that were affected by the strike, which weakened its impact. The hospital management did not have to cancel any operations or close any beds due to the strike. This is a major issue that we are also seeing coming up in the current strike of phlebotomists in Gloucester. There was no solidarity from the doctors in Berlin. Ironically enough, the strike was primarily organised by ‘organisers’ from an outsourced organising company that had been engaged by Ver.di – the contract with that company ran out in May, at a peak point of the strike. Apart from these problems, friends who supported the strike reported that the cohesion was good and the strike assemblies lively, despite the various language barriers amongst workers. At some points the assemblies decided to stage spontaneous and loud demonstrations through the hospital with around 200 workers participating.

The legal jungle

After only three days of strike action, the trade union had to call it off again, after CFM management went to court in order to enforce a minimum service agreement. According to the court ruling the CFM workers are allowed to continue the strike, but as hospital workers they have to agree to a minimum service, meaning that the number of strikers was legally limited. Like during the recent nurses strike in the UK, the legal ‘minimum staffing level’ was often higher than the normal day-to-day staffing level, e.g. in some porter areas where usually eleven colleagues would work, the minimum service agreement prescribed the presence of thirteen. Despite all these hurdles, the workers maintained a combative atmosphere and staged various demonstrations – you can watch a video with interviews here. During one of the protests, workers tried to force politicians who had an important dinner and were being put up in a five-star hotel into direct negotiations with striking workers, an effort that was stopped by the police.

Solidarity funds

Given that it looked like a long strike and that the union strike money had been modest at the beginning, a group of supporters around the group ‘Gesundheit statt Profite’ (Health instead of profits) started a strike fund campaign and, together with others, gathered 60,000 Euros. This put pressure on the trade union to increase the strike money to 100% of the basic wage. The union also claimed to have no money for the planned ‘end-of-strike’ party, so the group of supporters paid for it with money collected during the dispute.

Stop and go

Unfortunately, the union decided to interrupt the strike for negotiations on the 24th of May 2025. Management knew how to drag out the process of negotiations, so that the strike only continued again on the 30th of May. This left a lot of workers confused. Not only because the bureaucratic exercise seemed to interrupt the momentum, but also because the picket lines were used as strike assemblies to pass on information. Without these pickets during the negotiation interruption, the flow of information was interrupted and the mood dampened. During the dispute in 2011, strikes were continued not only during, but also after negotiations – not only in order to keep up the pressure, but also in order to allow workers to discuss the outcomes.

The outcome

After 48 days of strike the agreement is a mixed bag. The main issue is that the CFM workers are still outsourced and that they still have a different collective agreement, which divides them from their immediate hospital colleagues. According to the agreement their wages will be equalised with the public sector by 2030. This means that they will earn between 300 and 1,000 Euro (before tax) more per month by then, which is considerable. This is a long contract of 4.5 years, during which CFM workers are not allowed to go on strike and the contract will be voided. Management can cancel the contract if public sector pay increases by more than 3% – to avoid having to pay an additional increase of the CFM wages. On top of this, under the new contact, union members get an extra two holidays per year.

Conclusions

The main issue of the strike is that workers in the same hospital, who are members of the same union, didn’t manage to join up and struggle together. It would not even be necessary for the public sector hospital workers to go on an official strike. It would be enough to ‘work-to-rule’ and refuse to take on extra work when porters, cleaners or house-keepers are on strike. For that to be possible, the workers would need to develop direct forms of organisation, such as common assemblies or joined committees where decisions could be debated and coordinated, and a common struggle could be conducted.