After 540 nurses ended their labour contracts in protest against poor pay and working conditions, leaving some hospitals seriously understaffed as of Monday, Health Minister Viliam Čislák decided to file a criminal complaint against the leaders of their chamber and the trade union. He did not like their statements, according to which health care for over a million patients has been put under threat. "As a human being I feel sorry, but I also need to underline that health care is being fully provided to all patients, even those in the Žilina and Prešov regions."
Nurses' leaders, who have been asking for their salaries to go up for five years already, rejected any attempt to intimidate them.Iveta Lazorová, the President of the Slovak Chamber of Nurses and Midwives accused the Health Ministry of breaking the law as the majority of nurses brought to replace those who left the hospital in Prešov do not have a valid registration."The arrogance of power, which we have faced in recent days and weeks, only works to strengthen our conviction that our choice was right. It's necessary to expose the dysfunctional nature of the system," she said.
There are about 43,000 nurses and midwives in Slovakia. About a third of them work in facilities run by the Health Ministry or regional governments and a third in private clinics and practices. The rest, work for schools, army, police and all sorts of sanatoria and retirement homes. As a consequence nurses' pay and working conditions vary a lot as it is made by a basic salary that depends on the level of their qualification plus bonuses for night shifts, overtime, risky working environments and so on. The best paid ones are those employed by the university hospitals and specialised institutes run by the Health Ministry, the worst those working for smaller regional hospitals and retirement homes. As of January a new law sets the minimum monthly basic salary for nurses at €694 before taxes for the lowest qualified nurses and €823 for the top ones. It means that nurses' pay remains lower than the average wage on economy and among the lowest in Europe according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Slovakia has been also facing a shortage of nurses as many graduates are lured to by job offers abroad.
