Big trouble: 5,500 health care workers quit in Hungary ?

More than 95 percent of Hungary’s health-care workers have signed their new contract establishing their new legal status, the national director-general of hospitals said on Tuesday.

Initially, the new system was about to enter into effect with the start of the new year, however as the government could not reach a compromise with hospitals and all their doctors around the country, the date was moved to the 1st of March Monday. Read more here about pros and cons.

On Monday, the threat has become reality in several Hungarian hospitals where dozens of health care workers announced their renunciation, details HERE. As the official numbers show, alltogether 5,500 health care workers quit in Hungary.

Hungary’s health-care system employs more than 110,000 people, most of whom have accepted their new contracts, Zoltán Jenei told a press conference, adding that as many as 96 percent of them could end up signing the contract.

Jenei said the new legal status of health-care personnel would help maintain or even improve the quality of health care across the country.

Health workers had until Sunday to decide whether or not they wanted to work under the law governing their legal status, with the new contracts entering into force on Monday, he said.

During the talks, workers raised a number of questions and expressed several concerns, which the National Hospital Directorate-General is continually discussing with hospital directors, Jenei said. The directorate-general is open to discussing how to continue improving the quality of health care, he added.

Jenei expressed his respect for the health-care personnel who had decided to remain in the public health-care sector during the coronavirus pandemic.

Representatives of the Democratic Coalition, Jobbik, LMP, Momentum, the Socialist Party and Párbeszéd said in a joint statement sent to MTI said

that the government had “again opted for power rather than fairness”.

They insisted that the new contracts had not been preceded by meaningful negotiations, and demanded that the government should restore the legal status of health employees and the deadline for signing the contracts should be postponed until after the coronavirus epidemic was over. They also demanded that

the government should start substantive talks with employees and unions.

Meanwhile, the third wave of the epidemic is gathering momentum in Hungary, chief medical officer Cecília Müller said.

Source: MTI