Streiks im Sozialbereich erreichen heute Wien

The employees in the social economy are observing their second day of strikes on Wednesday. After strikes were already held in the federal states the previous day, work will now also be halted in Vienna on an hourly basis starting Wednesday. The employees' side wants to emphasize their demand for a four percent wage increase. The employers' side recently reiterated the external circumstances that would make fulfilling these demands impossible.

Social Economy Collective Agreement: Strikes Now Continue in Vienna

Overall, between Tuesday and Thursday, strikes will occur on an hourly basis at nearly 300 locations of the approximately 130,000 employees in private health, social, and care professions. "In the other federal states, the warning strikes already started strongly yesterday, and today they begin in Vienna as well. In Vienna alone, strikes are taking place at 70 locations," said GPA chief negotiator Eva Scherz in a statement to APA on Wednesday morning. "In all strike assemblies, employees are showing that they expect a reasonable offer from employers."

According to GPA, strike reports for 294 locations where strike assemblies will take place were registered the previous day. Most reports came from Styria with 90 locations, as well as 70 each from Vienna and Upper Austria. Twenty locations each reported strike assemblies in Lower Austria and Salzburg, twelve in Carinthia, seven in Tyrol, and five in Burgenland.

Collective Agreement Negotiations Stalled

The strikes were already announced on the night of last Friday after the collective agreement negotiations ended without an agreement after the third round. The offer presented by employers of an average of 1.71 percent on collective agreement salaries and 1.3 percent on actual salaries for 2026, as well as 1.65 percent on collective agreement and actual salaries for 2027, was deemed "insufficient," the unions GPA and vida subsequently stated.

The employers must finally come to the realization that their offer is clearly too little, Scherz emphasized at the start of the strike on Tuesday. In addition to a four percent increase, the employee side is demanding, among other things, improvements in working conditions, especially for part-time workers.

Final Action on Thursday in Vienna

For Thursday, the union is planning an action at the end of the strike week in Vienna's Ignaz-Kuranda-Park in front of the employer association Social Economy Austria (SWÖ). "We will also bring our protest to the employers tomorrow and insist with a light demonstration that our negotiating counterpart sees the light," said Scherz on Wednesday. "The employees in the care and social sector need to pay their bills." A "fair offer" is demanded at the next round of negotiations next week (December 11).

Clients of the companies or their relatives need not worry about the strikes, the GPA assured several times. However, the strikes would still be such that the employer side would "feel" them. Possible impacts could include cancellations of excursions for seniors or closures to customer traffic in certain areas for a few hours, such as in addiction counseling.

Employers Pointed to Difficult Circumstances

The employer side - social organizations such as Volkshilfe - has so far been understanding but unable to act. "We are dependent on the public sector," noted the chairman of Social Economy Austria and managing director of Volkshilfe, Erich Fenninger, last week, referring to the cuts by politics and the federal states. Pressure must be put on politics to ensure that the "social services of tomorrow" are adequately funded, he added on Sunday.

(APA/Red)

This article has been automatically translated, read the original article here.