Midwives from St. Josefs Hospital Potsdam: Collective bargaining employment from November!

Midwives from St. Josefs Hospital Potsdam: Collective bargaining employment from November!

In a far-reaching step to improve the working conditions of midwives, the team at St. Josefs Hospital Potsdam will be switching from freelance contracts to collectively agreed employment contracts from November 2025. This decisive step is the result of the economic challenges that are currently affecting many freelance midwives and was decided in close cooperation with the clinic management. The background is the innovations in the midwifery assistance contract, which could result in expensive income losses of up to 30 percent if nothing is done. Tagesspiegel reports that midwife Antje Schulz cites the increased insurance costs and the higher expenses for materials, space and administration as the main reasons for this realignment.

Colleague Luisa Hamann, also part of the midwifery team, expressed her relief at the solution found, which now enables obstetric care in a new organizational form at St. Josefs. Every year, around 700 births are scientifically monitored in this established hospital. The clinic explains that the latest compensation negotiations would effectively abolish the popular midwifery system and reduce compensation overall. A circumstance that not only harms the midwives themselves, but also the expectant parents and the newborns.

A step into the future

Alexander Mommert, the regional managing director, thinks about the importance of a solution that not only offers security, but also transfers the advantages of the midwife system into a new structure. In addition, the existing care key and the obstetric concept remain fully intact with the change to permanent employment, which is of enormous importance for everyone involved.

Dr. Siegfried Schlag, head physician at the Clinic for Gynecology and Obstetrics, emphasizes that the new model creates long-term security for midwives and at the same time ensures the high standard of obstetric care that parents and their children can rightly expect. By switching to employment, midwives will be able to concentrate better on their core competencies in the future without having to constantly struggle with economic uncertainty.

As the developments at St. Josefs Hospital show, even in challenging times, solutions can be found that benefit everyone involved. At least in this area, the clinic ensures that high-quality obstetric care in Potsdam remains in the best hands.