Nurses union calls for benefits and a shift allowance

Nursing staff on Thursday have called on the government to start paying a “shift allowance,” which they were receiving on top of their salaries prior to the 2013 financial crisis.

In an announcement, nurses’ union Pasyno said: “Ten years later, while we hear the government announcing the ‘economic miracle’ and parliament quietly or loudly agreeing, the reduction in salaries is ending next year, but we have not heard a word about the shift allowance, which a large group of workers that work with shifts.”

The union added that “we as nurses often hear people call us heroes and heroines because we shouldered the burden of Covid-19, a pandemic that we have not experienced before and were not trained to deal with.”

These are just words though, according to the union, and they have not heard anyone say that they should be rewarded for the work that they did.

We want the return of benefits that we were cut off from and that we are entitled to, especially now that the pandemic is returning and nurses are fighting again inside the hospitals to keep them alive, and to provide care to the patients,” they said.

Pasyno called on the finance ministry to return their salaries to normal, but that their calls have fallen on “deaf ears”.