Bulgaria
The industrial relations observatory EIRO reports on a meeting earlier this year which discussed the situation for emergency service workers in Bulgaria. Organisations representing the police, firefighters and other emergency staff are facing difficult conditions with not enough staff because of budget cuts and pressure to work excessive hours.
Read more at > EIRO
(February 2017) The OSZSP healthworkers' union announced strike action on 8 February in the emergency services in the South Moravia region. The union there had been trying to resolve a number of issues including excessive workloads, staff shortages, problems with implementing the collective agreement and discrimination in pay. The strike action was called after management not only failed to propose any concrete solutions but took decisions that only worsened the situation.
The collective agreement covering the Red Cross has been extended to cover all emergency service and ambulance workers. The decision has been welcomed by the GPA-DJP and VIDA trade unions that have been campaigning for over two years against wage dumping the sector. The next target for the unions is to negotiate a single pay structure for whole of the country as the Red Cross agreement currently has different pay levels for different regions. Read more at > VIDA (DE)
