German hospital doctors strike over pay
BMJ 2006; 332 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.332.7543.686-b (Published 23 March 2006) Cite this as: BMJ 2006;332:686All rapid responses
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I fully agree with one of your other readers, who complains about the
lack of numbers in this piece. What are German doctors paid? How many
hours do they work? Are they EWTD-compliant?
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
Dear Editor,
I am very grateful for Ms. Tuffs report on our strike in German hospitals.
One difficult entity of our political system has to be pointed out: In our
federal system we have to fight for our interests in 16 federal states and
in a different way for state and university hospitals and public regional
hospitals (so-called "kommunale Krankenhäuser"). This makes it all much
more complicated. Knowing the advantages and disadvantages in the UK from
my own work at NHS hospitals I would prefer a more centralised system as
you have in the UK. And in principle I still regard the NHS as a very good
system. In Germany all the different political authorities (the federal
government, the federal states, the regional governments etc. ) play
bargain with us doctors. In this and many aspects I do not regard our
federal system - as it now is - fit for the future anymore.
Now living in France and working in Germany, but still with an
enormous amount of symphathy for the United Kingdom and everything which
is British
yours sincerely
Dr. med. Andreas Heinze
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
Why print an article obstensively about German doctors striking over
poor pay and then not provide us with any details of their pay or pay
structure? I am left with no way of determining if strike action is
justifiable. They want a 30% increase. 30% of what?
Surely a good piece of journalism attempts to answer the obvious
questions instead of just padding out a headline to a few hundred words.
Please do better next time.
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
A few more details
This response is to the reader who asked for a few more numbers:
The 30% increase that Marburger Bund demands has been calculated from an
effective 30% decrease in physicians' incomes over the last few years,
resulting from abolished bonuses and increased weekly working hours
without adapting salaries, plus a substantial amount of unpaid extra
hours. Currently a senior house officer would receive a gross salary of
around 3000Euros (meaning around 1600Euros net) for theoretically 41 hours
a week, but many hospital doctors work 150% of that time or more without
extra payment. In addition to that, there are on-call duties that are
handled and paid differently depending on the hospital. (Working hours can
differ between different parts of Germany and different types of
contract.)
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests