After months of negotiations, the nearly 2,800 employees at Biotronik now have clarity: In Berlin, around 500 jobs may still be cut, and the workforce will forego an income increase of 5.2 percent this year. In return, the Neukölln company gives a guarantee for 2,200 jobs by 2027 and product commitments for the Berlin location. The company reached an agreement with the employee representatives on the content of this “collective wage agreement for the future”.
The medical technology company is one of Berlin’s industrial beacons. In 1963, the physicist Max Schaldach and the electrical engineer Otto Franke developed the first pacemaker in Germany at the Technical University of Berlin. They founded Biotronik for production and marketing. In the 1970s, the company opened its headquarters in Neukölln, where it is still located today in the Woermannkehre between the Autobahn and the Teltow Canal.
Corona is still having an effect
Biotronik has not yet overcome the corona-related market restrictions. “Clinics worldwide have canceled and postponed operations,” Biotronik explained the difficult situation at the end of 2022. This also included “interventions on the heart that have not reached the pre-pandemic level”. At the same time, the production costs for medical devices have risen “significantly in all areas” as a result of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. For example, the prices for precious metals, which are required for high-quality permanent implants, have “in some cases increased sixfold”. In short: The high costs “force Biotronik to make savings in order to maintain its innovative strength”.
Inflation premium is paid
After the wage agreement in the metal industry last fall, negotiations with IG Metall began to postpone the wage increase of 5.2 percent, which was contractually agreed for next June. This percentage increase is canceled and will be made up for in the years 2025 to 2027; After that, the area tariff applies in full again. The Berlin Biotronik employees will also receive the collectively agreed payment of the tax and duty-free inflation premium of 1,500 euros this year and another 1,500 euros at the beginning of next year.
2800
employees has Biotronik in Berlin
Biotronik employs almost 6,000 people worldwide, 2,400 of them in the Berlin core company and a further 400 in a service company that is also based in Berlin. These two Berlin biotronics companies are members of an employers’ association in the metal industry and therefore pay collective wages. This is not the case in smaller locations in Warnemünde, Pirna and in Baden-Württemberg.
Biotronik’s competitors are the American corporations Boston Scientific and Abbott Laboratories as well as the world market leader Medtronic from Ireland. According to Biotronik, it is the only manufacturer in Europe in the fields of active cardiac implants and the electronic monitoring of these implants. Active cardiac implants provide an energy source to monitor, support, or replace the heart’s function.
Save lives with “Medical technology made in Germany”
They want to “continue to save lives with medical technology made in Germany,” argues Biotronik. And I need a cost relief for this; also for negotiations with the banks. The company, which says it sells its products in 100 countries, does not say how big the loss was last year. Although sales in South America have recently risen sharply, the margins there are nowhere near as large as in the large markets of the USA and Europe, they say.
To home page
