Nurses Strike at Charité, Doctors Threaten to Follow

The labour dispute at Berlin's Charité university hospital is escalating. Verdi has already called nursing staff out in warning strikes over pay and working conditions, blaming a management plan to close the clinic's multi-million-euro deficit on the backs of carers. On 14/15 October 2026 the doctors' union Marburger Bund announced that it is surveying its Charité members on their readiness to strike, which would open a second front at Europe's largest university clinic. The hospital warns that further walkouts could force the postponement of planned operations and burden emergency care in Mitte, Wedding and Steglitz. Charité management says cuts are unavoidable because of a structural funding gap, while unions demand that the Berlin Senate step in with additional money rather than let patients and staff pay the price.