Medical workers reach agreement, strike avoided

  • 2005-05-04
  • By The Baltic Times
VILNIUS 's Representatives of Lithuania's medical workers associations have reached an agreement with the government on boosting salaries.

The agreement staves off a threatened strike that health care employees had scheduled for mid-May.

An agreement obliging to raise medical workers' salaries by 28 percent as of May 1 was signed during a meeting of government representatives and medical workers at the Health Ministry on Tuesday.

Upon reaching the agreement, medical workers decided to postpone their strike.

"Our requests are planned to be honored by the end of the year, therefore the strike scheduled for May 17 is postponed till October," Lithuanian Doctors' Union President Liutauras Labanauskas told the journalists after signing the agreement.

Labanauskas noted that medical workers "are not discontinuing the action but are postponing it," but assured that if the government meets its commitments in time, there will be no strike.

Lithuania's health care system employees, who are complaining that they are paid too little, have threatened they will go on a strike if the government fails to satisfy their demand to boost their salaries by 50 percent this year.

The strike, during which people would be provided with only emergency medical services, was due to start on May 17.