Low pay/minimum wages, Recruitment & organising, Czech Republic
Confederations coordinate national protests over cost-of-living crisis
Czech Republic Slovak Republic
The trade union confederations of the Czech and Slovak Republics – CMKOS and KOZ – have called national demonstrations on 8 October to call for action to tackle the cost-of-living crisis. They argue that their respective governments need to undertake urgent measures to support households in the face of soaring inflation and particularly high energy costs. They want to see increases in wages in general and particularly minimum wages and assurance that government budgets will include provisions to cover pay rises in public services.
Union movements organise protests over surge in inflation
With inflation increasing rapidly across Europe, trade union movements are mobilising to highlight the cost-of-living challenges facing workers, their families as well as pensioners and students. Latest figures show prices rising at anything from 6.5% to nearly 23% a year in Europe with further increases predicted. The CMKOS confederation in the Czech Republic is calling for a national demonstration in Prague on 5 September while the ÖGB confederation in Austria is coordinating protests around the country on 17 September. In between these two, the GSEE private sector and ADEDY public sector
Further seminar on recruitment and organizing during pandemic
On 18 June 20 trade union activists and officers from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Turkey took part in a webinar on organizing and recruitment. It was third online meeting prepared and run by the EPSU’s recruitment and organising team.
Union continues to push for more staff in social services
The OSZSP health and social care union met with ministry of health officials earlier this month to discuss staffing levels in the social care sector. The union has been pushing hard for the government to introduce safe and effective staffing levels. It underlines the need for this to be done on the basis of real assessment of needs and not on the basis of current staffing levels as many institutions are understaffed and staff overworked. The union also wants increased funding for providers which it sees as necessary to increase staff and tackle low pay in the sector where the average wage is
Capacity building project for the hospital sector in Central, East and Southern Europe started
On 28 March 2019 EPSU participated, together with its representatives of the two national affiliates from Romania, Sanitas, and Croatia, HSSMS-MT, in the kick-off meeting of the joint HOSPEEM-EPSU project focusing on strengthening social dialogue in the hospital sector that will run in 2019 and 2020.
Pay rise for public sector workers
Workers in public administration and some other public services will see their pay rise by at least 5% in 2019, with higher increases for low-paid workers in some areas including the departments of justice, culture, labour and social administration. There will higher increases of 15% and 10% for teachers and non-teaching staff in education while the security forces will get between 2% and 6%. The increase for health workers has yet to be confirmed. The OSZSP health union wants a pay rise of 10% across the board which it argues has been promised by the prime minister. However, the health
Union pay campaign calls for further increases
EPSU affiliates in the Czech Republic took part in the national rally organised by the CMKOS confederation calling for an end to cheap labour. The rally marked the latest stage in the campaign begun by CMKOS in 2015 and tying in perfectly with the ETUC pay rise campaign launched in February this year. The confederation says that pay across the country has risen by 10% over the past two years and it is calling for a further increase of 10% for 2018.
East-West pay convergence stalls
Bulgaria Croatia Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia Lithuania Poland Romania Slovak Republic Slovenia
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.