As if striking garbage collectors weren't doing enough damage to Germany's reputation for happy labor relations, doctors in eight major university hospitals have now also decided to hit the picket lines. On Thursday, practitioners in several German cities stopped work, calling for better working conditions and wage increases of 30 percent. In total 22,000 doctors are involved in the strikes, which could last for weeks.

Although doctors will still be offering emergency services, the action will result in longer waiting times for patients, as scheduled operations and examinations will be postponed. But remarkably, health workers are getting more sympathy from the public than the state and city service sector employees who have been striking for the past month  across the country.

Whereas those strikes in several German states have been met groans and rolled eyes, as garbage collectors and other civil servants haggled over 18 minutes spent extra at work each day, doctors are often working 80-hour weeks and 32-hour shifts. Despite the fact that escalating health costs and the creaking insurance system rule out any realistic prospect of increasing wages by a third, there is recognition that doctors get a rough deal in Germany compared to many other western countries.

But public sympathy is not just a result of wanting to be decent to good-hearted people in white coats. On a more pragmatic level, no one wants to be operated on by a surgeon who can barely keep his eyes open -- or still worse not have an operation at all because all the doctors have gone to work in England. And when German doctors start preferring the British National Health System -- until a few years ago viewed with derision as hopelessly antiquated on the Continent -- then clearly things have started going badly wrong in Germany.