A civic bill to amend the law on minimum wages in health care, prepared by the nursing community, will be handled by an extraordinary subcommittee, the Health and Public Finance committees decided at a joint meeting on Wednesday.
Nurses' salaries to subcommittee. This is not what they were hoping for...
Published Feb. 7, 2024 21:35
Fot. Getty Images/iStockphoto
The first reading of the draft in this term was held on November 29 last year (previously, the draft was "read" by MPs before the elections, but the work was not continued, but since the previous term's Parliament did not reject the draft, the new one was able to start work from scratch). Nurses already admitted that although they were happy to start work, they feared that it would be dragged out over time. On the other hand - the Sejm Speaker's decision to refer the bill before the new government was constituted and before work on the budget was hasty, to say the least. Civic Coalition deputies pointed out during the debate that the nurses' bill must be consulted with other medical professions. It was also rather obvious from the beginning that a subcommittee would be appointed, which became a reality on February 7.
However, before the committees to which the Sejm referred the project in November reached a decision, Law and Justice deputies tried to change the agenda. Janusz Cieszynski made a motion that the full committees, rather than the subcommittee, should work on the project, and that this work should begin immediately. However, the motion was not even put to a vote.
The committees therefore appointed a nine-member subcommittee consisting of:
Elżbieta Gelert, Marta Golbik, Krystyna Skowronska - KO
Józefa Szczurek-Zelazko, Janusz Cieszyński, Patryk Wicher - Law and Justice Party (PiS)
Ewa Szymanowska - Poland2050
Tomasz Trela - Left
Radoslaw Lubczyk - PSL.
Law and Justice deputies - who had previously voted against the establishment of the subcommittee - wanted the subcommittee to be given a maximum deadline of 30 days to submit its report, but the parliamentary majority rejected this proposal as well - meaning that the subcommittee will decide for itself when it will submit the result of its work to the committees.
The key changes included in the draft amendment, from the nurses' point of view, are first and foremost an explicit link between the group to which an employee is classified and the qualifications held (rather than required). It is the nurses who have the biggest problem with the current form of the regulations, because many hospital directors believe that it is the qualifications required and not the education earned that decides. Another important change is the adjustment of the coefficients in the groups to which nurses and midwives are classified.
