Overview
- Negotiators reconvene in Potsdam for a two‑day second round covering roughly 925,000 state public‑sector employees, with Hessen bargaining separately.
- Verdi and dbb demand a 7 percent raise with a minimum €300 per month, plus €200 more for trainees, higher shift allowances and minimum hourly pay for student workers.
- The states’ employers’ group (TdL) rejects the package as unaffordable, and chair Andreas Dressel pegs the annual cost at about €12.6 billion including the typical transfer to civil servants, citing inflation at 1.8 percent.
- Warning strikes and rallies on January 14 drew around 5,000 participants in Berlin and up to 1,000 in Hamburg, affecting services from schools to administration, though Hamburg officials reported limited operational impact.
- DBB chief Volker Geyer and Verdi’s Frank Werneke signal strikes could expand to sectors such as university hospitals and school staff if talks yield no concrete offer, with further demonstrations planned in Potsdam.