May 4, 2023 – Under the motto “We too are healthcare,” nurses, technicians, and non-medical staff held peaceful protests in front of four hospitals in Zagreb, Split, and Dubrovnik on Wednesday, demanding decent wages for their work and improvement of their labor and legal status.
As 24Sata writes, these half-hour protests were held in Zagreb – in front of the Merkur and Dubrava clinical hospitals, in Split in front of the KBC, and in Dubrovnik in front of the general hospital there.
The protests were organized by the Croatian Professional Union of Nurses and Technicians and the Independent Union of Health and Social Care Employees. Croatian medical staff, as well as non-medical staff working in healthcare institutions, are dissatisfied that their membership did not receive a ten percent increase in coefficients according to the government decree last week, which Croatian doctors did receive when they went on strike recently. The increase for other medical and non-medical staff was between 3 and 5.4 percent.
This time, unions have announced a series of mini-protests starting Wednesday, May 3. They will protest every day from 11 to 11:30 a.m., during the daily break, in front of various hospitals throughout Croatia.
The protests will be held until May 12, when, on the International Day of Nursing, a large, central protest has been announced in Zagreb.
Maids, cooks, laundry workers, and other non-medical staff in the healthcare system will join the nurses and technicians in protest activities. They are also demanding an increase in salary coefficients by a minimum of ten percent and an improvement in the labor and legal status.
The president of the Independent Trade Union, Stjepan Topolnjak, also said that there is a principled determination of the trade union to strike if the Government and the relevant ministry keep ignoring their demands.
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