Poland: Sejm nurses occupy, residents rush to the city council

Submitted by Редакция on 26 March, 2011 - 16:25

With the growth of discontent in the working-class and other social movements, politicians have increasingly become the target of protests. Group of nurses grabbed a gallery of Polish Parliament (Sejm), protesting against the regime of temporary employment. March 17 the Diet approved amendments to legislation aimed at speeding up the privatization of health care. Under the new legislation, local authorities, who refuse to commercialization of hospitals will be forced to cover the costs of health care, or simply close them. Local authorities who agree with the government commercialization plan will be frozen past "debts", available at hospitals.It should be noted that many of the "debts" were the result of deliberate under-funding in recent years.

One of the changes in the law will facilitate the administration of hospitals hiring nurses on temporary contracts. The trade unions of nurses oppose these changes, which will lead to greater instability of labor for nurses and certainly will form an economic burden on their shoulders. Another change would increase the working time for certain groups of medical professionals such as radiographers and physiotherapists.

Infuriated nurses raised the protest and decided to stay in the Diet for the night.March 18 protests have continued.

Giperliberalny health minister said that the existing obstacles to the contract system "unconstitutional" because they are de violate "freedom of choice" to work under the contract. Of course, other health care providers that have this "freedom of choice", it usually means "freedom" of the administration to hire workers on the side, eliminating the permanent jobs, as well as "freedom" of personnel to take unacceptable working conditions in companies outsourcing or job loss.

According to the protesters, the new law could lead to an increase in the number of working hours and, accordingly, to lower quality health care services. Five nurses, three days ago, began a hunger strike right in the Conference Room of the Polish Sejm. Now, nurses require them came the President's wife.

Speaker of the Seimas Grzegorz Shetyna said that no one is going to use force against the nurses, and they can safely wait for a decision Komorowski.

"We ask the president's wife Anne Komorowski, that she as a woman and as a mother interested in the situation that turned out to be a nurse," - said one of the protesters nurses Eva Obukhovskaya."We are starving for three days, there were swelling, pain in the spine. We have eight days were not in the fresh air," - she said.

In the past few months we have witnessed several protests of desperate workers of hospital departments, faced with the elimination of permanent jobs and outsourcing.

Nurses are already underserved by the whole country.Many hospitals are not met the conditions of collective agreements or not the promised salary increase. Currently, nurses are on strike in Stargard, is the hunger strike of nurses in Przemysl. In hospitals across the country continue to dozens of other labor disputes.

In addition to protesting nurses perturbed, March 17, activists broke into the tenants' hall of city council meeting in Warsaw, interrupting his meeting, and the politician said that they got home and could get out.

ZSP and the Committee to Protect Tenants have recently announced they would boycott a meeting with city officials who do not intend to change anything, and reiterated that do not recognize the legitimacy of local government. Both organizations are calling for people's control over public housing and state that will help people who can not get home, grab a vacant apartment.

Tensions increased particularly after the murder of activists of the Association of Tenants of Warsaw - the organization that also participated in yesterday's protests.Group of residents accuse politicians of pushing all the new, more inhumane acts turbokapitalisticheskih and direction of the budget and its funds into projects profitable small group of elites.

Apart from these two stocks in Warsaw, this month there is increasing workers' protests, in particularneighborhood have been major protests of postal workers and miners, serious threats of strikes on the railways, in some schools and at the factory "Fiat" in Tyhah.

Source

Video capture residents of the City Council of Warsaw