The municipal subsidiary Münchenstift is surprisingly separating from its managing director Renate Binder at the end of this month. The majority of the supervisory board decided on Tuesday to end the contract within the probationary period, confirmed Munich’s third mayor Verena Dietl (SPD) on Wednesday. The decisive factor for this was “that, from the supervisory board’s perspective, no common basis could be found for trusting cooperation between the works council and the company’s management,” said Dietl, who chairs the supervisory board as mayor.
The Green Party politician Binder only succeeded her party colleague Siegfried Benker as manager of Munich’s largest care provider last October. The non-profit Munich Foundation has a total of 15 senior citizens’ and nursing homes with around 3,000 places. As an employer, the city subsidiary employs around 2,000 people. The rift between Binder and the works council arose over the handling of internal allegations, it was said on Wednesday.
This was obviously about inconsistencies in the billing of night and on-call shifts, which Binder is said to have encountered shortly after taking office. In the course of the clarification, the Münchenstift separated from an authorized representative at the end of March; In addition, the city’s audit office was called in to assess the events. A report was promised for the beginning of July.
“I very much regret that the works council and I did not find a trusting working relationship. I would have wished that we had been given more time for this,” Binder explained in writing. “In order to gain clarity, I would have liked to wait for the audit office’s result.”
To do this, the probationary period agreed in her contract would have had to be extended again, it was said. This is said to have happened once in the spring, when there were supposedly tensions in the company. There was even talk of legal disputes between the managing director and employee representatives. The employee and CSU representatives on the supervisory board were no longer willing to extend the probationary period again. It was rumored that, together with an independent member of the supervisory board, they used their majority to suddenly remove Binder on Tuesday evening.
“Personally, I regret that more time was not given for a more comprehensive review to clarify the issues that ultimately led to the supervisory board’s decision,” explained Mayor Dietl, similar to the dismissed managing director. One can see this as an admission that the fronts were already so hardened that the supervisory body no longer saw any possibility of softening them again, at least not quickly.
There were also reports from company circles that Binder, a trained nurse and qualified health and social manager, was not up to the size of her task. Binder was somewhat surprisingly appointed to office by the Greens last year and was trained by her predecessor Benker for several months. Previously, she headed the community health planning and coordination department in the health department. There she had around 30 employees who looked after complex health policy issues such as various specialist departments or health meetings. At the beginning of her career she worked as a journalist and employee of the Green parliamentary group in the state parliament.
Dietl held initial discussions on Wednesday to ensure the company’s ability to act. After Binder’s departure, business responsibility will initially lie in the hands of Andreas Lackner. The supervisory board granted power of attorney to the previous head of the finance, controlling and administration department on April 24th. He had already been appointed as the management’s absentee representative in February. Lackner has extensive leadership experience, the mayor said.
It is now important to “find new management as quickly as possible,” said Verena Dietl, who recently gained relevant experience. In the course of the merger of the municipal housing companies Gewofag and GWG to form a unit called “Münchner Wohnen” (MW), two managing director candidates fell by the wayside last year: Gewofag boss Michael Dengler, who was already considered the top MW boss, stumbled over an expert opinion affair. Andreas Lechner, who was then hired in the fall, resigned on his own initiative after a month in office. The position of presiding managing director in the municipal housing company is currently vacant.