The trade union Verdi demands a one-time payment of 3,000 euros for each employee of the public service in the state of Berlin. The people needed a compensation for the currently very high inflation, explained Verdi department head Benjamin Roscher on Thursday.

Because: "The Berlin employees who do their job at the Senate and the district administrations are also suffering from the sharp rise in prices." On Friday, the union wants to hand over about 11,000 signatures of employees in favor of such inflation compensation to Finance Senator Daniel Wesener (Greens). They had been collected since mid-December.

According to the guidelines of the federal government, an inflation compensation payment would be tax and duty-free up to an amount of 3,000 euros. According to Verdi, regular collective bargaining for state employees is only due in about a year as part of the collective bargaining community of the states of which Berlin is a member. On the other hand, collective bargaining for federal and local employees will begin next week on January 24th.

Berlin's public sector is the city's largest employer, with about 215,000 employees. About a third of the employees are civil servants, the rest salaried employees.

Image by Wolfgang Claussen