Works councils from more than 20 hospital and university groups have issued an open letter warning the federal government about severe repercussions for the nursing profession if Health Minister Nina Warken’s current reform proposals are implemented in their existing form.
The hospitals representatives stated that the current plans would severely affect the work of professionals who “give everything, every day, whether in departments, specialized units, diagnostics, therapy, services, technology, or administration” to ensure quality patient care. The letter was addressed not only to Minister Warken but also to key government leaders, including Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU), Vice-Chancellor Lars Klingbeil (SPD), and Labor Minister Bärbel Bas (SPD). They emphasized that “all the success achieved in recent years in making the healthcare sector an attractive workplace could be undone”.
The core concern revolves around Ms. Warken’s plan to cap (or limit) the dedicated nursing budget, thereby preventing the full refinancing of wage increases for care staff. Under this model, hospitals would be required to cover the additional costs themselves-a financial burden that the sector is already struggling to bear.
Frank Werneke, head of the Verdi union, argued that this policy could lead to a deterioration of the care situation, potentially even leading to the closure of some facilities. Werneke pointed out that understaffing is already a persistent problem, stating that if the nursing budget is capped, the understaffing issue will be “cemented” and possibly worsened in the years that follow.
If wage increases cannot be fully financed, Werneke predicts that the hospitals will have no choice but to implement staff reductions, further diminishing the necessary resources for care. For patients, this translates directly into poorer quality of care. For the nurses themselves, it means increased pressure and stress, raising the risk that more staff will leave the profession because they cannot sustain the workload long-term. Werneke cautioned that “we would return to a vicious cycle that we had begun working to break”. Given that many institutions are already financially precarious, the union leader warns that these plans could lead to closures in droves.
The letter was signed by the employee organizations of major facilities, including Helios Kliniken, Charité, and the universities of Essen, Göttingen, and Magdeburg. Collectively, the works councils represented by the signatories account for approximately 323,000 employees.
