Up to 4,000 Doctors on Strike in Germany

Some 4,000 German doctors protested in Germany on Monday against proposed pay cuts in university hospitals and long working hours. Doctors in the western city of Gießen went on strike and protests were planned in other cities across the country including Munich, Mannheim, Heidelberg, Saarbrücken, Cologne, Aachen and Hanover. The leader of the Marburg federation, which represents doctors working in university hospitals where teaching is carried out, said its members were facing pay cuts of up to 17 percent. "This is not the way to ensure that university hospitals can do excellent research, excellent medicine and excellent teaching," Frank Ulrich Montgomery told German television. The doctors are calling for new contracts which guarantee "decent pay for decent work," Ulrich Montgomery said.