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HEALTH

Danish nurses to continue strike with no deal on horizon

The Danish Nurses' Organisation (Dansk Sygeplejeråd, DSR) has announced its ongoing strike will be continued, with 225 more nurses participating.

Danish nurses to continue strike with no deal on horizon
Danish nurses demonstrate in May 2021 following a breakdown in talks between employers and their union, the DSR. Photo: Philip Davali/Ritzau Scanpix

The additional nurses will strike from August 17th, the nurses’ union confirmed in a statement.

“Although we are taking a smaller number of nurses on strike this time, it will hurt (us),” DSR chairperson Grete Christensen said in the statement.

“(The strike) will come into effect when departments have returned from their summer holidays and would normally be increasing their activity,” Christensen said.

A strike of 702 nurses from August 10th was announced last week in a previous extension of the ongoing industrial action.

As such, as total of almost 1,000 extra nurses will now take part in the strike in addition to the initial 5,000 that first went on strike last month. That corresponds to around ten percent of the nurses’ union’s total membership.

READ ALSO: EXPLAINED: What Denmark nurses’ strike means for you

The nurses are striking after a DSR’s members twice turned down a collective bargaining agreement (overenskomst in Danish) negotiated with representatives of regional and municipal authorities, which are the employers of the nurses.

Later extensions to the strike were blamed by Christensen on inaction on the part of employers’ organisations and politicians.

“Our aim is to motivate employers to come to the negotiating table with more money for nurses and to get politicians at Christiansborg (parliament, ed.) to deliver the necessary framework needed to give nurses reliable promises that many years of lagging wages are going to end,” the union leader said.

Region North Jutland will see most scheduled surgery cancelled due to the strike, with capacity only sufficient for acute procedures.

Meanwhile, the Central Jutland Region will be required to cut back on the provision for free hospital choice, news wire Ritzau reports.

Nurses involved in surgery and anaesthesia will be among those involved in the additional strikes, DSR said.

The industrial conflict is therefore expected to result in delays to operations and other treatments.

According to DSR, around 36,500 health service activities were postponed during the first three weeks of the strike.

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TRAVEL NEWS

German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

Germany's Deutsche Bahn rail operator and the GDL train drivers' union have reached a deal in a wage dispute that has caused months of crippling strikes in the country, the union said.

German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

“The German Train Drivers’ Union (GDL) and Deutsche Bahn have reached a wage agreement,” GDL said in a statement.

Further details will be announced in a press conference on Tuesday, the union said. A spokesman for Deutsche Bahn also confirmed that an agreement had been reached.

Train drivers have walked out six times since November, causing disruption for huge numbers of passengers.

The strikes have often lasted for several days and have also caused disruption to freight traffic, with the most recent walkout in mid-March.

In late January, rail traffic was paralysed for five days on the national network in one of the longest strikes in Deutsche Bahn’s history.

READ ALSO: Why are German train drivers launching more strike action?

Europe’s largest economy has faced industrial action for months as workers and management across multiple sectors wrestle over terms amid high inflation and weak business activity.

The strikes have exacerbated an already gloomy economic picture, with the German economy shrinking 0.3 percent across the whole of last year.

What we know about the new offer so far

Through the new agreement, there will be optional reduction of a work week to 36 hours at the start of 2027, 35.5 hours from 2028 and then 35 hours from 2029. For the last three stages, employees must notify their employer themselves if they wish to take advantage of the reduction steps.

However, they can also opt to work the same or more hours – up to 40 hours per week are possible in under the new “optional model”.

“One thing is clear: if you work more, you get more money,” said Deutsche Bahn spokesperson Martin Seiler. Accordingly, employees will receive 2.7 percent more pay for each additional or unchanged working hour.

According to Deutsche Bahn, other parts of the agreement included a pay increase of 420 per month in two stages, a tax and duty-free inflation adjustment bonus of 2,850 and a term of 26 months.

Growing pressure

Last year’s walkouts cost Deutsche Bahn some 200 million, according to estimates by the operator, which overall recorded a net loss for 2023 of 2.35 billion.

Germany has historically been among the countries in Europe where workers went on strike the least.

But since the end of 2022, the country has seen growing labour unrest, while real wages have fallen by four percent since the start of the war in Ukraine.

German airline Lufthansa is also locked in wage disputes with ground staff and cabin crew.

Several strikes have severely disrupted the group’s business in recent weeks and will weigh on first-quarter results, according to the group’s management.

Airport security staff have also staged several walkouts since January.

Some politicians have called for Germany to put in place rules to restrict critical infrastructure like rail transport from industrial action.

But Chancellor Olaf Scholz has rejected the calls, arguing that “the right to strike is written in the constitution… and that is a democratic right for which unions and workers have fought”.

The strikes have piled growing pressure on the coalition government between Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Greens and the pro-business FDP, which has scored dismally in recent opinion polls.

The far-right AfD has been enjoying a boost in popularity amid the unrest with elections in three key former East German states due to take place later this year.

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