North Macedonia, Bulgaria

The EIRO industrial relations observatory reports that new legislation has introduced the right to strike for workers in the civil service, energy, telecommunications and healthcare sectors for the first time.

Health workers in Bulgaria successfully negotiated a new collective agreement on 4 June that increases their salaries by 90 to 100 per cent. The signing of the agreement comes before the discussions on the 2009 Budget, and after the mass strikes of 2007 in the education and health care sectors. The increase will take effect on 1 July, and will cover hospitals in state and municipal ownership, as well as hospitals operating as joint stock-holdings. The agreement is the first in a series of steps aimed at bringing the salaries of Bulgarian workforce into line with those in the European Union in

The Federation of Trade Unions in Health Services (FTU-HS) organized a roundtable last month with the Bulgarian Association of Health Professionals (BAHP) to discuss how to tackle violence against healthworkers. The trade unionists and professionals were joined by government representatives. A study by the FTU-HS found 7.5% of health workers had been victims of violence with nurses making up the biggest group. The union said it would establish a committee with the BAHP involving also the Bulgarian Medical Association and patients’ organisation to look at ways of tackling violence.

Governments, employers and trade unions have agreed on the introduction of a national minimum wage. The minimum rate will initially be set at €130 a month and will come into force next year. An estimated 65,000 workers will benefit from an increase in pay as a result. Eurostat provides a briefing on the extent and level of minimum wages across Europe. [Read more at > SETimes news website (EN)->http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/roundup/2011/10/05/roundup-bs-03] [And at > Eurostat (EN)-> http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Minimum_wage

A new national collective labour agreement in the healthcare sector was signed last month by the Minister of Health, trade unions and employer organisations. The agreement is a result of lengthy negotiations in the Sectoral Council for Tripartite Cooperation in Healthcare and applies to all health facilities. The agreement protects existing social benefits and provides for an increase in monthly salaries of between 10% and 20%. Employees who work on on-call receive increases in their hourly payments and the payment for night shift work is doubled. The agreement is backdated to 1 July 2012.

The Independent Union of Energy Workers has signed the first ever collective agreement covering companies in the private sector. The union and employers agreed that the purpose of the agreement was to apply international labour standards, to equalize working conditions at sector level and to establish a framework of rights that the employees should be entitled to, which will maintain fair competition between employers.