advertising campaign costing three million Euros with the motto of "Genug gespart" (Enough saved). The aim of the campaign was to drawn more attention to the work carried out by the public service in the run-up to new collective agreement negotiations. After a wave of warning strikes and several rounds of negotiations, the parties called for conciliation in March 2008. Although this failed, Verdi ultimately agreed on a new collective agreement with the German Federal Government, the German federal states and local authorities. The trade union achieved a wage increase of eight percent, which some observers labelled a heavy burden for the public budgets. Verdi attracted a total of 50,000 new members during the trade dispute. It later managed to repeat that success in similar negotiations in 2018, with an agreement which provides for a cumulative 7.5 per cent increase in salaries over a period of 30 months and includes top-ups and extra payments designed to make the public sector a more attractive employer. Notably, Verdi held a series of strikes at Deutsche Post in 2015 in a dispute over pay and plans for a new parcel division. Those walkouts, one of which lasted four weeks, cost the firm 100 million euros at the time. Educational services Verdi runs a number of educational centres throughout Germany, all of which aim to support the exchange of experiences and expertise between its members. These services are particularly, but not exclusively, aimed at active works councils. The educational centres are also used as venues for job-related and general further education programmes on a wide variety of different topics. Verdi currently runs educational centres in Berlin, Bielefeld, Brannenburg, Gladenbach, Mosbach, Naumburg (Hesse), Saalfeld, Undeloh and Walsrode. It closed its site in Hörste at the end of 2015 and the building is now being used as a home for refugees. Alongside the educational centres specified above, there are also a number of independent ver.di educational institutes that were taken over from the former German Union of Salaried Employees (DAG) in several federal states. ver.di Bildung + Beratung Gemeinnützige GmbH ver.di Bildung + Beratung, known as ver.di b+b for short, is Verdi's educational institution that operates throughout Germany. It is responsible for running seminars for statutory special interest groups, namely works council, staff council and Youth and Trainees Council (JAV) members, as well as members of representative bodies for disabled employees and employee representation committees. ver.di