Bulgaria: Employers and Unions Announce National Protest Over Rising Electricity Costs
Employers and trade unions in Bulgaria have announced a national protest on January 15, 202
This morning, The Confederation of Labour Podkrepa and The Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Bulgaria from State Management and Organizations within the National Security Council are organizing a protest demonstration in front of the Council of Ministers. The event is set to commence at 9:30 a.m. and is linked to the upcoming decree aimed at tackling wage disparities among state administration employees, according to an announcement from the press office of the Confederation of Labour "Podkrepa".
With BGN 268 million already earmarked from the state budget, the allocation, detailed in a government decree, has been publicly disclosed. This financial directive, meticulously crafted over three months, has been disseminated to all ministries for deliberation and approval. Its fundamental objective is to rectify imbalances in remuneration across different administrative entities. Under the proposed decree, individual basic monthly salaries would see increases ranging from BGN 215 for contractor-level positions to BGN 375 for managerial roles. The beneficiaries span a spectrum of institutions, including the Social Assistance Agency, the National Insurance Institute, the National Health Insurance Fund, and the National Revenue Agency.
While anticipation for the decree's adoption was high at Monday's government meeting, the voting has been postponed to today, as per Kremena Atanasova, head of the Confederation of Labour Podkrepa, Atanasova, along with counterparts from the National Security Council, harbors grave apprehensions regarding potential reductions in the initially designated funds for departmental salary boosts.
"This is written in the Budget Law - that by March 31 this decree had to be a fact. We have participated in all the conversations in the Council of Ministers. Both we and the team in which this was assigned to the Council of Ministers tried to do everything possible for these funds to be distributed fairly. Since this is still not a fact. We have been lied to so many times that we fear that we will be lied to again", Atanasova remarked.
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