An educator plays with children in a day care center in Cologne.
Foto: imago images/imagebroker/Jan Tepass
A quarter of all daycare educators give up in the first five years of work. “Some of them prefer to go to Aldi at the checkout,” says Elke Alsago, who is responsible for social and educational services at the Verdi service union. This has to do with the poor working conditions in this area. Corona has made the situation even worse. Basically, there is no protection against infection for the employees. You can see that in the current sickness figures. “A quarter of the staff is currently ill,” says Alsago.
The trade unions are therefore demanding an upgrading of professions in social and educational services. On Friday they will meet for collective bargaining with the Association of Municipal Employers’ Associations (VKA) in Potsdam. Further rounds of negotiations are already planned for March and May. The immediate concern is around 330,000 employees, 245,000 of whom work in raising or caring for children, 55,000 in social work and 30,000 in caring for the disabled.
Since the collective agreements are adopted by Caritas and other organizations and are often the basis for other remuneration systems, Verdi estimates that ultimately two-thirds of the 1.66 million employees subject to social security contributions and 130,000 marginal employees in the industry are affected by the agreement.
Collective bargaining began in March 2020, but was then interrupted due to the corona pandemic. It shouldn’t be about classic wage demands, where a certain percentage comes out at the end. Instead, a general revaluation of the affected professions. In addition to the issues of the shortage of skilled workers and working conditions, Verdi also wants to talk to the VKA about better classifications in the public service pay system. And of course that also has financial implications for the employees.
An upgrade is “urgently necessary” because the professions concerned do not have the same status as male-dominated professions, said Verdi’s deputy chairwoman Christine Behle on Monday at a virtual press conference. She will lead the negotiations for her union together with Verdi boss Frank Werneke. According to Behle, of the 1.66 million people employed in the sector, 1.4 million are women – and professional qualifications are not worth as much as in other areas of public service.
For social workers with a university degree, the starting salary is 3246.36 euros per month. For other jobs that are comparable in terms of the required qualifications, however, pay group 10 of the general pay scale in the public sector applies. This provides for a starting salary that is EUR 184.15 higher, at EUR 3430.51.
For educators, for example, Verdi demands that they be grouped into salary group S8b instead of S8a. This would increase the starting salary by 2.2 percent from EUR 2879.77 to EUR 2942.66. In the future, salary group S4 instead of S3 will apply to nannies and social assistants. After five years of work, this means 3050.62 euros per month instead of 2876.92 euros gross, i.e. an increase of 173.70 euros or six percent.
In the face of such demands, employers react rather coldly. »We also have to keep an eye on the salary structure of the entire municipal civil service. Improvements can therefore not be made with a watering can, but where they are indicated,” said VKA general manager Niklas Benrath.
Many municipalities are already paying more salaries voluntarily. According to Verdi, for example, in Mannheim, Hanover, Stuttgart and Bremen, employees are assigned to S4 instead of S3. The reason for the union is obvious: there is simply a lack of staff. Around 173,000 skilled workers are currently missing in the day-care centers. According to the German Youth Institute, up to 1.2 million daycare places and over 300,000 skilled workers could be missing by 2025 unless something fundamentally changes.
The civil servants’ association, which will be sitting at the negotiating table from Friday, is therefore also putting pressure on the traffic light coalition. “We conduct collective bargaining for the social and educational services with the municipal employers. But: The federal government also has a duty, «said the head of the civil service association, Ulrich Silberbach, on Monday to the dpa news agency. Ambitious plans for early childhood education and social work were formulated in the coalition agreement between the SPD, Greens and FDP. »If they are to become even a rudimentary reality, the federal government must give the municipalities more financial support.«
In order to emphasize their demands, Verdi is planning two days of action. One on March 8, Women’s Day, one on March 15, World Social Work Day. There shouldn’t be any work stoppages at first. They will only go on strike “if there really is no other way,” said Verdi Deputy Behle. But she also made it clear: »There is a lot of anger. The colleagues really feel left alone.«