Staged scandal: Charité employees make a fuss about Kai Wegner

It's intended as a hands-on, audience-friendly talk by a government leader. A classic "I'll be showing off my stuff" event, where you'll get to know Berlin's neighborhoods. Berlin's Governing Mayor has already participated in "Kai Wegner on Location" nine times. Most of the time, the discussions were stimulating and sometimes controversial; genuine anger or protests were rare. The tenth event, held Tuesday evening on the grounds of the Ufa factory in Tempelhof, was a special one in this regard.

For several weeks now, there's been a topic that Kai Wegner has been struggling to shake on "Kai Wegner on Location." The service workers' union Verdi has chosen the dates for its demonstrations. The topic is the current strike by low-wage workers at the Charité Facility Management (CFM) subsidiary of the state-owned hospital groups Charité and Vivantes.

Protests against the Governing Mayor

Early Tuesday evening, up to 100 union members, equipped with yellow vests and whistles, set up a stand on Viktoriastraße in Tempelhof and initially prevented Wegner from entering the Ufa factory premises. For years, Verdi has been demanding that its workforce be included in the collective bargaining agreements for the public sector, just as other employees of the two companies have. Specifically, this means: 3,200 of the 3,500 cooks, cleaners, gardeners, security guards, and other workers employed by subsidiaries of Charité and Vivantes are to be reclassified and thus receive better pay. In a ballot, Verdi members at CFM voted for indefinite strikes.

The strike by the low-wage Charité workers was already a major topic at the previous “Kai Wegner on Site” in mid-March at the Pumpe youth culture center on Lützowstraße in Tiergarten, as was the then current BVG strike.

Wegner assured the hospital workers of his moral support. "We'll look into it, we'll review it," he said. After all, the CDU and SPD had agreed in 2023 to integrate CFM into the parent companies Vivantes and Charité.

The coalition will carry out the repatriation of the subsidiaries of the state-owned hospitals as quickly as possible. The repatriations are intended to guarantee fair working conditions.

On Tuesday, he also had a few kind words for the strikers. He said he would speak with the board members of Charité and Vivantes the following day about their situation. He didn't get any more specific, including where he would find the additional costs for better work – estimates range between 10 and 50 million euros – from the already depleted budget of the state of Berlin.

Verdi says that CFM management recently submitted concrete offers for the first time . The offer includes wage increases to be achieved over three years. At the same time, however, CFM insists on cementing systematic unequal treatment, according to the union. Management is not prepared to pay employees according to the same system and the same pay scales as at the Charité. The union will consult with employees at a strike meeting on Wednesday to determine whether they accept the current collective bargaining offer or want to continue the strike. In any case, CFM already bears responsibility for an extension of the strike.

And apparently, somehow, the head of government too. "The fact that we have to strike here at all is solely because Kai Wegner is breaking his repeated promise to end the two-tier workforce at the Charité. That is unworthy of a governing mayor," Verdi quoted Mirela Edrenić, a member of the collective bargaining committee.

A staged mini-scandal

The audience began with a whirlwind tour of the four topics that are at the forefront of every "Kai Wegner on Site": transport, construction and housing, security, and education. Appropriately for the Tempelhof-Schöneberg district, the discussion included the repeatedly postponed start of construction on Tempelhofer Damm, which has been criticized primarily because of the planned felling of 60 trees on the central reservation. The construction work, planned over several years, will include the replacement of a subway tunnel as well as three almost 150-year-old sewage pressure pipes, which, according to the water company, are some of the oldest in the Berlin network. Wegner said he wanted to take another look at the plans for the deforestation – conservationists are calling it a "clearly unnecessary tree massacre." Whatever that may mean.

And, of course, the Tempelhofer Feld was also on the agenda. Wegner reiterated his well-known positions on this: peripheral development and the transformation of the interior into a parkland with a recreational character. A new referendum should be conducted, which the conservative-red coalition government hopes will produce a different result than the one from 2014, which has since enshrined the current status quo.

In the end, it happened as it almost had to – and no amount of kind words helped. Union members apparently close to the Left Party shouted repeatedly during Wegner's speech, demanding that he personally instruct Charité and Vivantes to pay CFM employees better. It was a staged and coordinated mini-scandal, yet loud enough to overshadow all other topics of the evening.

In June, “Kai Wegner on Site” will be a guest in Marzahn-Hellersdorf.