Cuts in health care in Essen continue to increase. At the end of June, the obstetrics and gynecology department at the Alfred Krupp Hospital closed after 110 years. Before that, the department had already had to close for several weeks in April, naturally without consulting employees or expectant mothers who had birth appointments for that period. Justified by the lack of midwives for obstetrics and oncological doctors for the treatment of women with tumor diseases. Here, too, the economic interest of the hospital, which puts efficiency before well-being, becomes more than clear.
In the previous year, Krupp Hospital alone handled around 800 births out of a total of around 5800 children born in Essen. With the closure of the Marienhospital in Essen 2 years ago, only 2 clinics will be able to help pregnant women as of July. The city of Essen nevertheless claims that there is still no greater risk of childbirth for all women within Essen. However, it has not been possible to speak of safety for a long time, since the staff of the departments for obstetrics was largely managed by temporary workers from temporary employment agencies or employees of the in-house floatation pools, in a non-specialist manner. The shortage of midwives in inpatient obstetrics has existed for years. The already few trained forces, say goodbye increasingly from the hospitals into the independence due to partly inhuman working conditions. Hospitals as pure economic enterprises let patients become pure numbers in the financing system of the case lump sums around a higher profit to gain the Liegedauer of the to treating one is shortened ever further. Another point on which savings are made, however, is above all on the employees. No new problem, nevertheless Essens mayor Kufen (CDU) stages itself as large reform proponents only after the Aus of the gynaecology in the Krupp hospital is sealed and a ebensolche reform of health minister Lauterbach in the Vormonat was announced. As in the kitchen scandal, hospital administration and city bureaucracy decide on the closure over the employees and do not inform them personally at all. Meanwhile, the two remaining maternity wards of the other hospitals are already dividing up the manpower of the Krupp's specialist staff, who are rendered useless for the Krupp.
The procedure is sold to the public as a friendly concession, as new offers have been made to the staff in a timely manner. The fact that midwives, pediatric nurses and gynecologists have no choice but to work there anyway is not mentioned. Only health care workers and nurses continue to be desired.
Neither workers nor patients experience respectful and dignified treatment in the Krupp business enterprise. The few who try to take action against this treatment are publicly denounced. Instead of meeting the demands of the employee representatives for respectable working conditions, the fight against the rights of the workers is waged here instead.
As early as 2006, the for-profit company tried to surreptitiously come under church sponsorship in order to undermine the Works Constitution Act. On January 1, 2006, the hospital management had suddenly acquired membership in the Diakonisches Werk of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, and the employees were informed of this and the associated suspension of the works council on the same day during ongoing operations. The works council took action against this, was proven right and the hospital had to continue to be run under public law, which required standard labor law and the maintenance of the works council.
In 2013, the hospital management of the Krupp Hospital then tried to extraordinarily terminate the trade unionist Tobias Michel from the works council. For this purpose, the management was not above setting a detective on him, as it became known at the labor court. Michel denounced illegal working time organizations for doctors and nurses and gave union seminars on employee-friendly rostering and collective bargaining issues within his agreed unpaid special leave. The hospital management's accusation was that company agreements were not treated with sufficient secrecy. Shortly before, the disagreeable works council had gone to court with 36 colleagues from the in-house kitchen. At the time, the hospital management had abruptly dismissed 40 kitchen staff without consulting the works council. The closure of the in-house kitchen had been planned for a long time.
The last to know about the kitchen closure was the kitchen staff, on the same day. An outside company took over the catering, justified by economic interest. The kitchen was a cost factor, the board said at the time. The staff representatives were not involved in order to avoid uncomfortable discussions and to avoid staff absenteeism, which was the result of earlier wrong decisions by the hospital management. For example, the closure of the rehabilitation department of the bought-out branch of the clinic in the Steele district; the works council had dared to invite the staff to a meeting lasting several hours, which, according to the chairman of the clinic's management, the kitchen staff could not afford. In order to placate the kitchen staff's anger, the management tried to sell off its own employees to external companies located at the other end of the city. The works council took advantage of the violation of the Works Constitution to bring about the restoration of kitchen operations in summary proceedings, but succeeded only in ensuring that the employees could not be dismissed for operational reasons.
The Alfried Krupp und Bohlen und Halbach Foundation may claim to care about the well-being of people, but in the end the foundation, like its namesake, is only concerned with money. To this end, every attempt is made to squeeze out even more money on the backs of the workers in the health sector, but also on those of the patients. The consequences are then borne by the workers, through increasingly poor health care, as well as through increasingly poor working conditions.
