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On September 10, over 11,000 nurses and midwives marched in Warsaw in a nationwide protest called by the OZZPiP union of nurses and midwives. The union has been negotiating pay rises with the Ministry of Health.

Over the last 15 years, nurses have been trying to get satifactory wage increases, to little avail. Many nurses earn in the range of 600 euros gross per month and the profession is now severely understaffed as women go abroad to work and few young people enter the profession. Wage increases in the past years have mostly gone to doctors and hospital administrators.

The nurses had been threatening a strike, but it has not come to fruition. However, since negotiations keep coming up short, there is now nationwide strike preparation. The nurses are demanding an increase of about 350 euros per month, to be phased in over three years.

A few people from the ZSP participated in the protest as well; it was the only independent union present. However, the nurses from this union are not covered in the negotiations of the OZZPiP, not because they are outside this main union, but because the Ministry has excluded several categories of hospitals, including psychiatric hospitals where our colleagues work. Having been cut out of the picture entirely, there is a long road ahead for gaining anything. We note that our union finds it very negative that the powers that be divide workers not only into professions, but sometimes according to their work places.

Besides those categories of hospitals which have been excluded, we also note that there is a group of nurses on trash contracts earning a subminimum wage which goes as low as 300 euros gross per month – in other words, half of what their underpaid peers are earning. In 2013, statistics showed that 6.5 percent of all nurses were on these contracts. Another portion were forced into self-employment and work as fake contractors.

We will see how this all develops and we wish the nurses success. But it is clear that, whatever success the OZZPiP might achieve, there are still workers that the Ministry plans to leave out and there is a need for additional action.