As announced in our survey, we will present the results of our online survey in detail here.
Thankfully, you can also find a brief outline in the current issue of Hunderunden FEB/MRZ 21 - https://hunderunden.de/vets
Here are our results detailed.
You are welcome to join the discussion in the comments!
In the period from 06.11.2020 to 30.11.2020 we have published on our website www.tierarzt-stellenangebote.de conducted a survey on the thesis: „Collective agreement for veterinarians and then the shortage of specialists will disappear“. This was triggered by the discussion between Dr Christian Wunderlich (1st Chairman of the BAT e.V.) and Dr Bodo Kröll (owner of the specialist veterinary centre for small animals in Erfurt and bpt Presidium member) on the topic of „Do we need a collective agreement?“ at the bpt Congress 2020.“
Within the rather short survey period, we had an enormous return of 190 voluntary and random survey participants[1], that we have gained through advertising measures on facebook.
In the following, we would like to present the results of this non-representative survey, then briefly explain the system of collective agreements in order to start a further discussion with some stimulating, provocative theses / questions: https://www.tierarzt-stellenangebote.de/diskussion-tarifvertrag to enter the market.
- Online survey results
Our survey design and results were as follows:
- Do you feel underpaid?
Yes, I feel underpaid: 157 participants
Draw: 4 participants
No, I don't feel underpaid: 29 participants
Yes, I feel underpaid, which means 82,6%.
Based on this result, the following answers to the question were also surprising: 2. are you well remunerated for overtime? not:
Not at all: 92 participants
No, insufficient: 30 participants
Goes like this: 49 participants
Yes, good: 19 participants
This means that 122 participants did not receive overtime pay at all or only insufficiently, which 64,2% corresponds.
Next, we wanted to know how the participants perceived the 3. Work-life balance feel:
It's not possible - far too much overtime without compensation: 54 T[2]
It works like this - lots of overtime, but also appropriate compensation: 39 T
It is still bearable: 76 T
Very good - I have a good balance: 21 T
Against the background of the Questions 1 & 2 quite interesting, salaries and overtime compensation are apparently not directly linked to the perceived work-life balance. Only 28% said that their work-life balance was poor.
Furthermore, against the background of the increasing feminisation of the veterinary profession, we also wanted to know: 4. How can you reconcile family and career?
Insufficient: 7 participants
Poor: 48 participants
Sufficient: 35 participants
Satisfactory: 72 participants
Good: 22 participants
Very good: 6 participants
52,6% of participants stated that they were able to reconcile family and career satisfactorily to very well, which seems to contradict the often caricatured image of inflexible employers. We pick up on this again in the concluding theses.
We wanted to know more about this in order to be able to recognise any contradictions in the information previously provided: 5 Does your partner understand your profession?
Yes 57 participants
Mostly 110 participants
No 21 participants
Abstentions 2 participants
I.e. 87,9% have understanding partners, which interestingly complements the results of questions 3&4. Now one can argue about which came first - the understanding partner or the job, but a good work-life balance and a good family relationship seem to be closely linked.
To better categorise the answers, we wanted to start with question 6. know: What is your main focus?
Small/domestic animals 128 participants 67.37 % (BTK 70.76%)1
Equine practitioners 27 participants 14.2% (BTK 8.3%)1
Mixed horses/large animals 18 participants 9,4% (BTK 2,2%)1
Large animal / livestock practitioner 9 participants 4.7% (BTK 10%)1
Mixed horses/small animals 6 participants 3,1% (BTK 7,9%)1
Birds/reptiles 2 participants 0.1% (BTK kA)1
This also roughly corresponds to the distribution of registered veterinarians according to the statistics of the German Veterinary Association (BTK) as at 31 December 2019, whereby we have omitted the category „farm animals + small animals“ of the BTK.[3]
In the following, we have allowed three open questions, the answers to which we can unfortunately only provide excerpts here due to their structure, but whose input will be included in the subsequent development of theses:
7. can a new allocation / admission to veterinary studies not help better?
This question was answered by 17 participants with a yes, 69 with a no, 32 participants saw this as part of the solution and 72 abstained from making a statement.
In the supplementary free text responses, there were often calls for a more practice-orientated admission procedure and less one linked to the NC. Intrinsic motivation etc. should also be better assessed.
With the eighth question we wanted to know: What would a collective agreement have to contain in order to make a difference?
As this was also an open question, here are just a few extracts:
The vast majority demanded better salaries and overtime pay. The topics of time recording, regulated working hours and emergency service regulations were also very present.
Finally, we asked: 9. what else do you think would reduce the shortage of skilled labour?
Very interesting non-quantitative demands were made here, such as more Appreciation in the profession, both from practice owners towards their employees and from patient owners as well as in society. However, the topic of animal insurance and the associated overall Improved economic basis of veterinarians - including the demand to adapt the GOT - were exciting food for thought. Clear Career prospects in conjunction with. Training opportunities were another demand, particularly from employers. There were also isolated calls for a Male quota in the admission process (also in connection with question 7).
- How does a collective agreement work?
Against the background of the survey results presented above, we would like to take a brief look at the subject of collective agreements, collective bargaining autonomy and what a collective agreement can contain and to whom it is applicable, as a false understanding has obviously become entrenched, not least in our survey, but also in the discussion at the bpt congress.
- Collective agreement definition
In a collective labour agreement one industry The basic framework conditions and regulations for employment relationships have been laid down. The rules concern the start, end and content of the employment contract and regulations for day-to-day work. A collective agreement serves to protect the interests of employees and employers. The collective agreement does not replace an employment contract. Provisions from collective agreements take precedence over those in individual employment contracts. If there is something in the employment contract that contradicts the collective agreement, it is null and void. The collective agreement itself applies automatically without this having to be agreed separately or signed by the employee. A collective agreement also applies before a Company agreement. A collective agreement must be in writing and listed in the collective agreement register. The employer must also display it for all to see. Collective agreements are regulated by law in the Collective Labour Agreement Act.
- Who is covered by a collective agreement?
Graphic taken from: https://www.clockodo.com/de/lexikon/tarifvertrag/ -Retrieved 17.01.2021.
First of all, this means that there must be two parties to the collective agreement. This means at least one party representing the employees and at least one representing the employers. At present, however, the situation is such that with the Association of Employee Veterinarians (https://bundangestelltertieraerzte.de/) has only been preparing to set up an employee association/trade union since 2016. According to its own information, it had only 561 members at the end of 2020. This corresponds to just 6% of all practice assistants.[4]
On the other hand, the employer must also be affiliated to an association that is bound by a collective agreement in order for the collective agreement to be effective. If only one party in a company is organised in an association, no collective agreement applies. In the medium to long term, this can be detrimental to employers who do not want to join an association, for example, but it does not have to be, as long as they offer similarly good remuneration models as employers organised in associations. However, there is currently no employers' association that represents the entire spectrum of veterinarians. In 2019, an association of independent veterinary clinics was founded, which, as its name suggests, explicitly excludes the ever-increasing number of veterinary chains, and thus a large proportion of the jobs that exist there (https://www.vuk-vet.de/). So far, only 26 members are represented here according to their own information. With a total of 12,019 registered veterinarians[5] at 0.2%, this is a negligible proportion.
We are therefore currently faced with the dilemma that there are no parties capable of concluding a collective labour agreement!
- What do collective agreements regulate?
Collective agreements regulate the minimum standards for various areas of work:
- the wage
- the amount of special payments
- the working hours including maximum working hours and breaks
- the holiday entitlement
- the working conditions
- the start of employment relationships
- the cancellations
- the length of the collective agreement
In a cross-company collective agreement for an entire industry, the wage then applies as the industry minimum wage. This must be at least as high as the statutory minimum wage.
- Further legal regulations
This brings us to another regulation - the Minimum Wage Act. In addition, there is also the Working Hours Act, protection against dismissal, the Vocational Training Act and much more, so that there are already many legal regulations outside of collective agreements that must be complied with today. It is therefore all the more astonishing that employers have only recently realised that the previous emergency service practice was not compatible with the Working Hours Act.
The EU has now also clearly clarified the issue of recording working hours:
„Back in May of last year, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that the Tighten up working time recording and has set this in motion with a judgement. In essence, all EU member states must oblige their resident employers to carry out a full working time recording system.
MeaningEvery hour worked by all employees must be precisely documented. What initially sounds like a great deal of effort and an instrument for monitoring pursues a different goal and is intended to help employees. Because, according to the European Court of Justice, without Complete working time recording It is hardly possible for employees to organise working hours and above all Overtime reliably and enforce their own rights and entitlements. Thanks to the new obligation to record working hours Unpaid overtime will be a thing of the past - or at least reduced. The new working time recording system goes one step further than the previous regulations in Germany.
The German Working Hours Act (ArbZG) regulates the maximum working hours per weekday or week. These regulations serve to Protection and recreation of employees by regulating breaks and rest periods, as well as work on Sundays and public holidays and night shifts. Previously, employers were only obliged to record overtime and extra hours, i.e. the hours that beyond the regular working hours go. In future, all working hours will have to be recorded.“[6]
- Questions / theses for further discussion
- Localisation of graduates prevents competition between employers and therefore better starting salaries
It is a fact that in Germany, with five faculties of veterinary medicine, we are not comprehensively organised in terms of space. It is also a fact that even an entry-level assistant paid according to the bpt recommendations is not on a bed of roses compared to other academics. Graduates have often found a partner during their studies who has studied in a different field and now earns more. What is the consequence? There are often an excessive number of starting assistants at the five study locations and the „province“ remains empty. This leads to such paradoxical situations that veterinarians in Munich look for other professions because they cannot live on their salary in Munich. On the other hand, vets in the Bavarian forest or in the Augsburg area are desperately looking for vets. The latter would also pay far more than in Munich. But this healthy competition between employers fails because graduates are inflexible in terms of location.
- Apprenticeship years are not master years
When calculating starting salaries, comparisons are often made with engineers or business economists. But this comparison is flawed. While an engineer or business economist can be directly involved in projects, a graduate of a veterinary faculty often lacks the basics of daily practice. The many internships etc. do nothing to change this. A comparison should rather be made with lawyers after the first state examination or teachers in their traineeship. In Baden-Württemberg, for example, the latter only receive EUR 1,512.62 for a teaching post at grammar schools.[7] Junior assistants should be aware that in the first year or two, employers primarily invest in the training of the assistant and that their contribution to the profitability of a practice is limited during this time. Universities should also finally revise their training programmes. What sense does it make to teach all animal species throughout the entire degree programme if someone only wants to specialise in horses or small animals from the outset? Why do all vets have to do internships in slaughterhouses when most of them never want to work in a veterinary office? A more practical training programme would also lead to higher starting salaries.
- Insufficient enforcement of existing laws
How can it be that in our survey 64.2% state that they receive no or insufficient remuneration / compensation for their overtime, when, as already shown above, this is mandatory for every employer and will become even more so in the future? In our opinion, this is only possible because employees put up with it. And why? Because, for various reasons (see 1 above), they are not consistent and in a position to change jobs to better employers. To a large extent, this is also down to the employed vets themselves - there are fair and good jobs out there. But they are usually not just round the corner from the university!
- Is the job description of a vet to be equated with that of an employee covered by a collective agreement or is there not a different understanding?
In the past, the idea prevailed that you would accept the rather extensive studies and the years of training afterwards with the prospect of becoming self-employed later on and then being paid for all your efforts. And yes, this is still possible today and any self-employed vet who claims that they are earning poorly is either lying or is in such a bad business position that they would be better off disappearing from the market. Being a vet is not just a 9 to 5 job, it is a vocation. Nevertheless, employers are called upon to develop attractive working time and part-time models, especially in view of the massive feminisation of the profession, so that family and career can be well coordinated. On the other hand, female veterinarians are also called upon to provide employers with the necessary planning security. It is difficult for an employer to plan when maternity leave, parental leave, breastfeeding leave (which is not defined in terms of length) are followed by further pregnancies, etc. This is where timely and open communication would be helpful. Timely and open communication would be very helpful for the employer here. This would also benefit the reintegration of young mothers and not hinder them in their further professional career.
- Rethinking the admission criteria for veterinary studies
The currently still prevalent allocation of German study places in veterinary medicine according to absurd NCs does not appear to have done the profession any good. On the one hand, too few people are able to start their desired degree programme immediately after graduating from high school or completing a voluntary year. Other criteria, such as practical experience through relevant training or practical tests, such as those required at Austrian universities (aptitude tests)[8] can reduce drop-out rates, but also reduce later disappointments caused by suboptimal media role models (Wendy & co. or Dr Wolf). The fact that 5090 out of 5925 German first-year students are now female - 85.9%[9] is certainly not a good and healthy development. It has never been beneficial for a degree programme, be it in human medicine at the beginning of the 20th century or in engineering, when one gender dominates so strongly. This not only has a direct impact on the study environment, but also continues throughout the entire career cycle.
- Better appreciation of the profession - who cares?
Our survey clearly showed that, in addition to remuneration and hourly compensation, appreciation is clearly the most important criterion for veterinarians (and not just those who are employed). Within many clinics and practices, the internal appreciation of senior staff towards younger staff appears to be in need of improvement. Coaching sessions for bosses and corresponding seminar programmes can certainly help here. If that doesn't help, our advice is to go and find a boss who suits you. Appreciation in our society - the increasingly ungrateful and unappreciative behaviour of patient owners - how can this be improved? Who can improve it? We believe that the associations (bpt, BAT, VUK) and chambers have a duty here. Just as the Marburger Bund for human physicians, the World Medical Association etc. were permanently present in the media, especially during the corona crisis, it would be desirable to see representatives of veterinary medicine lobbying. Apart from the fact that Prof Wieler from the RKI is a veterinarian, not much has been heard recently about veterinarians and their work, especially during the pandemic. Much remains to be done to urgently improve the general image and appreciation of the profession.
You can find these questions / theses online at https://tierarzt-stellenangebote.de/diskussion-tarifvertrag comment and continue. We look forward to a lively exchange in the hope that one or the other responsible person will read along.
- Conclusion
As the survey has shown, despite the apparent lack of well-paid jobs and little to no overtime pay, the veterinarians surveyed are more satisfied with their profession - especially with regard to their work-life balance and private life - than is often reported in the media or associations.
If you ask the vets openly, in addition to these quantitative goals, qualitative goals - above all (social) esteem - also come to light. So far, there has been little or no focus on these in the discussion. A collection of aggressive patient owners at her practice, compiled by veterinarian Dr Grelck / Hagen on Instagram as recently as 16.1./17.1.2021, but also many reports from other veterinary practices, show that we are now increasingly finding social phenomena in our everyday professional lives. The phenomenon of cyberbullying was already addressed by the German Veterinary Journal in 3/2016 in its article „Cyberbullying and negative reviews on the internet“, pp. 354-358, and these excesses have not got any better in the meantime.
It is therefore up to all of us - veterinary practice owners, but also associations such as bpt, BAT, VUK and the individual state veterinary chambers - to create an environment that does justice to the extensive and high-quality training of veterinarians. However, the initial assistants are also called upon to be more flexible in their choice of work location and to be consistent in the event of poor treatment. Only in this way, in conjunction with any kind of optimisation of working hours and remuneration, can a better and tangible appreciation and therefore greater attractiveness of the profession be restored.
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Dipl.-Ök. Sven Jan Arndt, LL.M. (corp.-restruc.), CIA is Managing Director of doc4pets GmbH - an owner-managed group of five small animal practices in south-west Germany. Due to its constant growth, it is always on the lookout for veterinarians specialising in small animal medicine/equine medicine. The vacancies are aimed at junior assistants who will be accompanied on their future career path as part of a mentoring programme. However, senior veterinarians for small animals are also offered exciting vacancies and clear career prospects. As the manager of one of the branches, it is possible to do more than just a job, but to take responsibility for staff and business success. In addition, as a vet you have the opportunity to become involved in the branch you manage as an entrepreneur and later take it over completely. Doc4pets calls this job offer a partnership. You can find out more about the concept at https://www.doc4pets.de
[1] The masculine form is often used in the following. This does not constitute a judgement and serves the purpose of simplification.
[2] T is an abbreviation for participants
[3] See Tab.2, Statistics 2019: Veterinary profession in the Federal Republic of Germany, Deutsches Tierärzteblatt 7/2020, p.862.
[4] See Tab.2, Statistics 2019: Veterinary profession in the Federal Republic of Germany, Deutsches Tierärzteblatt 7/2020, p.862.
[5] See Tab.2, Statistics 2019: Veterinary profession in the Federal Republic of Germany, Deutsches Tierärzteblatt 7/2020, p.862.
[6] https://karrierebibel.de/arbeitszeiterfassung/ - retrieved 17.01.2021.
[7] https://www.gew.de/vorbereitungsdienst/bezahlung-im-vorbereitungsdienst/?gclid=Cj0KCQiA3Y-ABhCnARIsAKYDH7vbmzamEMHExQ-hvVHgLQAZBPnuQhhyyFFK5XncJcDmPKL1Jqz1wgwaAl5nEALw_wcB - retrieved 17.01.2021.
[8] https://www.vetmeduni.ac.at/de/studium/zulassung/zulassung-2020-2021/ - retrieved 17.01.2021
[9] See Tab.8, Statistics 2019: Veterinary profession in the Federal Republic of Germany, Deutsches Tierärzteblatt 7/2020, p.870.