Hungarian nurses demand similar wage hike to doctors’

The wages of nurses and other skilled health-care employees should be increased by a similar extent as the recently announced salary hike for doctors, trade union MESZK said on Monday.

In a statement, the union said that health-care staff was overburdened both physically and mentally in view of the coronavirus pandemic, and warned that it could compromise the security of both patients and their own.

“An uncertain outlook has resulted in extreme tension among staff,” the statement said.

The union welcomed the government’s plans to increase doctors’ pay, but demanded that the sector’s other employees should be given a hike of at least 50 percent in 2021, as the first instalment of a scheme to be continued in 2022 and 2023 following “the same timing and scale” as in the case of doctors.