Salaries for health and social care workers will rise from this month in two installments – in March and June – by a total of 20%, according to an emergency decree passed by the government on Thursday.

The promise of a 20% pay rise was made by the government back in January, when Sanitas, the largest union federation in the healthcare system, threatened to launch a general strike if wages were not increased.

“The normative act approved by the executive power establishes that starting from March 2024, the basic salaries of employees who hold positions in the field of social assistance, as well as employees of TESA departments and centers of social assistance with or without the status of a legal entity, will increase by 20% compared to with the level of the basic salary applicable to December 2023. This increase is granted in two equal parts, starting from March 1, 2024, respectively from June 1, 2024,” the Ministry of Labor reported in the press. release

“The mission of social workers is not easy at all, and they should be rewarded fairly, according to the work done. As we committed during the discussions we had with the representative trade union organizations in this field, the Romanian government has today increased the incomes of those who have committed to take care of the most vulnerable among us,” said the Minister of Labor and Social Policy. Solidarity, Simona Bukura-Oprescu.

The government’s emergency order also increases the basic salaries of medical staff as well as TESA medical staff, with the increase to be phased in.

235,611 doctors, pharmacists, biologists, chemists, physicists, medical registrars, medical statisticians and allied health personnel, TESA staff will also benefit from the increase.

The regulatory act also establishes that general medicine doctors who are on duty in emergency medical services and reception structures of emergency medical care (VPU/CPU) as part of medical centers will receive compensation for the duties performed on the basis of individual time – on the basis of the employment contract in part .

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