The Health Insurance Fund has announced that wages can rise next year by 3% for doctors and 6% for nurses and caregivers in an effort to avoid a strike, organised by the doctors' and health care workers' trade unions, that begins on 1 October. The unions want to stop the exodus of doctors and nurses to other countries. They want the health care system to return to growth from what they call a state of collapse. ‘We seek a national collective agreement so that we can treat patients in our homeland working under normal load and for a motivational salary,’ said Iivi Luik, chair of the health care workers' union. The doctors’ trade union stated that it has enough funds to compensate its members’ foregone salaries for a few months, should the strike last that long. Meanwhile the railway workers have announced that they might support the strike.
English: http://news.err.ee/health/b59b61f9-ef4c-4d80-8957-2ea2e92a6740
http://news.err.ee/health/9a02ba86-6e8f-47bf-ac70-d9fece8b80e8
http://news.err.ee/health/b59b61f9-ef4c-4d80-8957-2ea2e92a6740
http://news.err.ee/economy/9daf0331-3089-4727-902c-d3721ba864eb
For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the communications officer at the ETUI, Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org. For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net.