Tuesday’s meeting of the Tripartite Team for Health Protection ended without an agreement. The government wants to postpone wage indexation in the health-care sector, but presented no concrete proposals. Social partners are demanding written commitments.
Another meeting on health-care wages has exposed a deep communication crisis between the government and the medical community. Tuesday was supposed to bring a breakthrough in talks on pay for health-care workers; instead, it revealed the Ministry of Health’s lack of concrete solutions.
Deputy Health Minister Katarzyna Kęcka announced that the ministry would present in January a draft shifting the indexation of minimum wages in health care from July to January. The change would not take effect until 2027, which in practice would mean a six-month “freeze” on pay raises for thousands of workers in the sector.
But the meeting—which was attended not only by Deputy Minister Kęcka, but also by Deputy Finance Minister Hanna Majszczyk—brought no specifics. Representatives of trade unions and employers unanimously stress that they received no detailed proposals at all.
No specifics. “Not a single proposal”
Wojciech Wiśniewski from the Federation of Polish Entrepreneurs, co-chair of the team, did not mince words in his assessment of the meeting. “It ended without any specifics,” he emphasized, adding that neither employers nor unions accept a situation where ministry proposals are attributed to them without prior agreement. Maria Ochman, head of the National Secretariat for Health Care of the NSZZ “Solidarity”, went even further. “The government side presented no proposal whatsoever regarding minimum wages or contracts,” she noted.
The Ministry of Health pledged to submit its position in writing. This is a response to the clear demands of the social partners, who want concrete proposals rather than vague declarations.
Health-care system in collapse
The deadlock in wage negotiations is yet another warning sign for a system already facing severe problems. With hospitals struggling with staff shortages and patients facing lengthening queues, failure to reach an agreement on wages may deepen the crisis in health care. It is already enormous—for example, the hospital in Ostrołęka switched on December 1 to “emergency mode”, limiting services to life-saving care and urgent hospitalizations.
The dire state of the health-care system is expected to be one of the topics discussed at the meeting of ruling-coalition leaders.