Latvian Trade Union of Health and Social Care Workers (LVSADA) plans to make its final decision in regards to the organisation of an industry strike in October, as LETA was told by the trade union’s chairman Valdis Keris.
He said the trade union’s council decided to compose a Strike Committee. Similarly to last year, Līga Bāriņa will be the chairperson of this committee. This committee will be responsible for making pre-strike preparations.
According to Keris, it is necessary to discuss growth of wages this year, because 2023 will end soon. He also said it is necessary to commence discussions about the sector’s funding for 2024 as soon as possible.
LVSADA invites Latvia’s new Minister of Health Hosams Abu Meri to meet with the council. Keris said the minister has already responded to the invitation and wants to meet with the council next week to discuss important topics.
“I hope we will be able to outline the main directions to follow in order to find a reasonable compromise in the interest of all of Latvia’s residents, because an accessible and quality healthcare is a basic need for everyone in the country.
As once again stressed by the World Health Organisation, if people’s lives are in danger – everything is in danger,” said Keris,
stressing that people’s health should be the main priority in any country.
He reported that an extraordinary meeting of LVSADA is scheduled for the 18th of October. During this meeting the trade union plans to decide on actions to take in the future. Keris said one month is enough time to survey the situation and the preparedness of medical institutions for the strike. He also said it is enough time to study the attitude of the Minister of Health towards the healthcare policy and provision of additional financing.
In August LVSADA presented to the Ministry of Health collective interest dispute demands, thereby basically initiating the pre-strike procedure. Demands provided for the implementation of the tripartite agreement on increasing wages in the industry.
The trilateral agreement was reached on the 7th of March 2023. This agreement states that if the Ministry of Health is provided with additional funds from the redistribution of the budget this year, then the priorities for its use are to include the increase of the average monthly wages for doctors and workers of medical institutions who are not medical practitioners.
“It is said that the ministry did not consider it important to allocate EUR 7.6 million from the EUR 140 million originally allocated for the healthcare sector to support the remaining workers of the sector. The situation is dramatic.
The shortage of workers has gone so far that patients are unable to sign up for certain examinations even for a full price,” Keris previously said.
LVSADA is also unhappy with the initiative listed in the new government’s declaration to preserve state funding for healthcare on the current level – 12% of the expenditures of the basic functions of the state budget. This year this is EUR 1.8 billion or only 4.2% of the expected GDP. This means the government plans to continue starving the country’s healthcare sector, the trade union stresses.
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