The Latvian Health and Social Care Workers’ Trade Union (LVSADA) has decided to express no confidence in Health Minister Hosams Abu Meri (New Unity) and the Ministry of Health, union leader Valdis Keris informed.
LVSADA will decide on further actions at the next council meeting on December 16. Keris explained that preparatory work still needs to be done to determine the next steps — possibly involving questionnaires and surveys, as well as identifying further courses of action.
The trade union will monitor how the state budget project progresses in the Saeima. Keris noted that if the budget is not adopted and the government collapses, one scenario would follow; but if the government continues to work, another plan is foreseen. Therefore, the upcoming developments will influence the union’s subsequent actions and their scope, Keris said.
“At the moment, there is still a bit of information missing, but I think by mid-December everything will be sufficiently clear,” he stated.
The union leader also confirmed that a protest is not excluded,
noting that the declaration of no confidence is only one of the first steps.
As previously reported, the trade union is demanding that from the 1st of January, 2026, the average salary of medical practitioners be increased by 13.5%, and that for non-medical employees in medical institutions, salaries be raised by 120 euros. This would require an additional 133 million euros in the budget.
According to the union, neither this year nor in 2026 does the government plan to increase the wages of healthcare workers. This, in turn, threatens to accelerate the outflow of professionals from the public sector, in a situation that is already critical in terms of human resource shortages, LVSADA notes.
LVSADA explained that during the first meeting of the conciliation commission, the union called on the Ministry of Health (MoH) to submit a request to the Cabinet of Ministers for additional funding for the healthcare sector, and proposed to suspend negotiations until a response was received from the government.
However, during the second meeting of the conciliation commission,
the MoH announced that it would not submit the request to the government.
Instead, the ministry proposed that LVSADA jointly submit a request for a pay increase when the 2027 state budget project is being drafted (in 2026), and on the condition that the government has not prohibited making such a request, the union explained.
LVSADA could not agree to such a proposal, and therefore no agreement was reached between the parties to the dispute. Consequently, the work of the conciliation commission — initiated after the union launched a collective interest dispute procedure to satisfy its demands — has ended without results.
Meanwhile, the MoH stated that it is aware of the seriousness of the human resource situation in healthcare, especially the shortage of nurses, and acknowledges that salary increases are a key factor for retaining and attracting specialists to public-sector workplaces providing state-funded healthcare services. The ministry emphasized its commitment to “targeted and systematic strengthening of human resources in line with the Health Workforce Development Strategy 2025–2029, as well as
maintaining regular dialogue with the trade union and professional organizations in the sector.”
The ministry also reminded that in 2023, it signed a Cooperation Memorandum with LVSADA on strengthening human resources in the healthcare sector, and that on the 1st of January, 2024, a salary increase was implemented in the sector.
Health Minister Hosams Abu Meri (New Unity) has stated that no funds are currently available in the budget to meet the union’s demands.
For the next year, the health sector is allocated an additional 34.5 million euros, most of which will be directed toward improving maternal and child health care.
LVSADA claims that the Cabinet of Ministers has created a state budget project for 2026 that will reduce the state’s competitiveness, harm Latvia’s sustainability, and undermine social justice.
According to the union, the current state budget project must not be approved.
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