A big recognition goes to the Healthcare employees who traveled also from great distances in order reach Milan and voice together with their colleagues a determined dissent about the current company handling in the legal carve-out of the Healthcare division and its merge with Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics.

Never before were Siemens employees so determined and united! Independent of their professional roles within the company (office employees, service engineers, applications specialists, sales support functions, etc.) all felt the need to strike. Also the ones who have never dared to do so before!

The Healthcare employees in strike expressed their appreciation and gratitude for the solidarity shown by the IG Metall for their difficult situation.

In the late morning a delegation of employees in strike together with their employees’ representatives and the FIOM-CGIL trade unionist met the Siemens HR representatives and remarked their dissent regarding the many critical issues in the bargaining agreement proposed by Siemens. They also reiterated their strong interest in reaching a bargaining agreement, showing openness to possible changes to some of the current rules as long as no disadvantages and worsening of the current working conditions derive from such changes.

The delegation has requested the Siemens HR representatives to provide concrete answers on all the issues already known to them, as they were extensively discussed during numerous, lengthy meetings with the employees’ representatives since the beginning of the negotiations. In the afternoon the employees’ representatives were summoned to a meeting where the Siemens HR representatives declared the negotiations reopened and asked to stop any protest actions planned for the following days.

The employees’ representatives will present today a written document including several improvements to the bargaining agreement initially proposed by the company; such requests are considered by the Healthcare employees absolutely indispensable to reach an agreement.

The company representatives have committed to review the requests in the shortest time possible and to provide an answer by July 3^rd.