Water, Health, Slovak Republic

(June 2017) Public sector workers get a 6% pay rise this year and the same again next year, if the current economic climate is maintained. This agreement was promoted by the KOZ confederation and picked up by the ETUC Pay Rise campaign which also reported on the push for a higher minimum wage in the country.

In the first of a series of three meetings over a thousand public service workers gathered in Košice to discuss pay in the public sector. The unions are calling for action on minimum salaries and a pay system that recognises workloads, levels of education and length of service of public service workers. Two further meetings are planned as part of this broad trade union consultation process - one in Banská Bystrica on 16 November and the final one in Bratislava on 23 November.

The KOZ trade union confederation organised a national demonstration in Bratislava on 27 October in support of the 13% pay claim by public service trade unions. The government has not offered any pay rise at all for 2022 and the unions are looking to ensure that workers are compensated for inflation, as energy and other prices soar, and for recent years when pay in the public sector has lagged behind increases in the minimum wage. KOZ also used the demonstration to draw attention to the impact of prices rises across the economy and to call for increases in pensions and other social benefits.

Following the large demonstration in October in support of a pay rise for public service workers, unions are angry and disappointed that the government has failed to respond. Marián Magdoška, president of the KOZ trade union confederation said that unions were presented with the budget for 2022 a day before a tripartite meeting and realised that, despite promises from last year, it didn’t include any provisions to cover even a pay rise to compensate for inflation. The health union is also angry that in negotiations at the end of October the government was effectively blackmailing unions by

The SOZZASS health workers’ union has expressed concern over the way that the health ministry is addressing health workers’ pay and its failure so far to undertake proper negotiations with the unions. In its latest announcement the ministry has indicated its willingness to increase pay for nurses and refers to bringing average nurses’ pay up from 89% to 100% of average earnings. While SOZZASS welcomes a commitment to increase pay for nurses it says that this should be as the result of collective bargaining and that all health workers deserve a pay rise.