Lithuania, Bulgaria

EPSU affiliate LTUSE reports that the Lithuanian government has agreed an increase to the national minimum wage next year but it will be the third time that civil servants have missed out on an increase. The minimum monthly wage will increase to 600 LTL (173,77 euros) next July. This will be the third increase since 2003 but none of these increases have applied to state workers whose minimum wage is still 430 LTL (124,54 euros) a month, this is less than a third of national average earnings in Lithuania which are 1,331,50 LTL a month (385,63 euros).

Lithuanian trade unions rallied together on 10 November to protest against low wages and long working hours. The three EPSU affiliates received a very encouraging turn out, and also were endorsed by numerous messages of support from fellow national unions and international trade union federations. They called on the Lithuanian Government to recognise that as part of the package of being a successful member of the European Union, they needed to enact policy that would bring the country into line with the living standards in other parts of the EU. In particular the Unions demanded that as a

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.

Pressure from EPSU affiliate, the Lithuanian Trade Unions of State Employees, has led to a new law implementing an increase in the base salary from 442 litas (€128) to 490 litas (€142). This is an increase of just under 11%.

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