Social Services, Low pay/minimum wages, Moldova, Malta, Latvia, Armenia

EPSU affiliate LAKRS organised a picket of the ministry of transport on 4 October calling for better pay and conditions and a collective agreement covering bus workers. The union wants to see a minimum wage of EUR 7 an hour for drivers and action to tackle the widespread problem of long working hours.

Social workers organised by the UHM Voice of the Workers trade union have been taking industrial action in support of negotiations for a new collective agreement. The action consists of a range of measures that affect non-emergency work across the service but it maybe stepped up if there is no progress in the negotiations. With many staff leaving the service, the union is looking for a deal to increase pay but also to provide continuing professional development.

An analysis by the European Trade Union Institute shows that wage convergence between East and West in Europe was steady up until 2008. However, since then the trend has either stalled or gone into reverse. Taking national average pay as a percentage of the average across the pre-2004 EU15, Croatia and Hungary show the largest increase in the pay gap since 2008. There were also increases in Slovenia, Czech Republic, Poland and Romania.Most progress was made in Bulgaria but from a very low level (11.8%) to 17.7%, still less than a fifth of average pay in the West.