[ad_1]
However, doctors and nurses will be paid according to the new salary scale from the beginning of next year, but health workers will not be able to resign during an emergency, according to a recently published implementing regulation that governs the details of the law.
In light of the new regulation, the Index highlighted the most important changes and asked the leaders of professional organizations representing stakeholders what they thought of the new rules.
- What future awaits health workers?
- Will your situation be better or more difficult overall?
- Is it worth being a doctor or nurse in Hungary?
Mandatory transfer of health workers
The centrally prescribed gender of ascription for health workers has existed until now and was part of the Hungarian legal system. At the same time, until the coronavirus, which permanently burdened domestic medical care, was not mentioned, it existed at all, so anyone would live with it.
Under the original idea, the transfer of a health worker from his permanent job to another institution could have been “temporarily” for two years instead of the 44 days required by law. At the suggestion of professional organizations, they finally relaxed into the regulation on the two-year secondment plan.
According to the implementing regulations, there are 44 days left, which is definitely a positive step. The threat seems to have disappeared and many feared that secondment would become a common practice of organizing work even in peacetime.
– evaluated the measure to the Index Zoltán Szabad, President of the Hungarian Medical Union (MOSZ).
The expert adds that the implementing regulation makes the stipulation of the maximum duration of the commission of service a mandatory part of the new employment contract, but at the same time he wishes to remind everyone that the law still provides for a second posting.
Which has also changed from the original plan, which states that publication is not mandatory:
- women from conception to three years,
- large families that are considered large families under the Family Support Act,
- who are raising a child under the age of 6 alone,
- If both parents of a child under the age of 16 are in a medical service relationship, only one of them can be designated.
Neither are those who:
- take care of your family members personally,
- have been shown to have at least 50% damage to your health,
- are entitled to a retirement pension and do not contribute to their assignment,
- Residents who have half a year left until the professional examination.
Based on the feedback, some groups were still left out who felt the exemption would have been fair to them as well.
He said Péter Vámosi, member of the board of the Hungarian Residents Association for the Index.
In families that work in preschool, elementary, and toddler health care, for example, if the doctor’s father is referred and the mother works as a night or shift nurse, the father is most likely single have difficulty caring for children.
Prohibition of dismissal during an emergency
A government decree issued in late November states that healthcare workers are prohibited from firing during an emergency. Péter Vámosi would like to think in good faith about the “strongly restrictive” step that everything serves higher social interests.
We do not know the exact reasons, but it is likely that, for security of supply reasons, the government has ruled that layoffs should be prohibited for the duration of the second wave of the epidemic. This, of course, does not console colleagues who may have recently planned to resign.
Said a neighbor of the association.
The subject of second jobs
Perhaps one of the most controversial and irritating parts of the bill passed by Parliament in early October is whether, in exchange for the pay increase from January 1, a healthcare worker, doctor or nurse could be relocated and, if so, who will allow it. .
Public health workers must currently apply for a second job permit if their working hours conflict at the two workplaces.
(They receive this almost without exception.) If there is no impediment to this, they are subject to a simple notification obligation.
By comparison, the October law establishes much greater rigor in the area. It doesn’t necessarily limit just the second classic job, but all activities for a fee.
Broadly speaking, as of March, the doctor must already request permission to rent his apartment or engage in primary production in his garden, from the moment he enters the new state of the health service.
– explained Péter Vámosi.
The resident association employee sees the risk of a labor shortage at the same time that sector workers will lose income under the new system. The question arises, for example, whether such work can be carried out from March 2021 by doctors on duty employed in public hospitals as employers.
As of March, the licensing of second jobs in the staff of national and county institutions is the responsibility of the OKFŐ.
However, it is not yet clear how this body will process a predictable number of thousands of requests in eight days.
As this is not yet the case, the evaluation criteria system is established. There are fears that all this will lead to non-transparent decision-making and opportunities for abuse, the MOSZ president said.
Changes in on-call fees and medical salaries
In fact, the low base salaries of those who work as civil servants in health care have so far increased significantly with overtime and on-call pay. That is why the stakes for on-call fees in the new health services relationship are not small.
This is because the amount of on-call fees will determine how much the base salary increase in the October law will bring to health workers.
It is not yet known how much the general healthcare worker will earn.
– draws attention to Péter Vámosi deficiency.
All of this is a big question mark in this area, because this time the regulation is also in conflict with various laws in this area.
The Labor Code, on the one hand, establishes, for example, that the guard duty is 40 percent of the normal salary. And the Health Care Act speaks of 70 to 80 to 90 percent, depending on whether the duty falls on a weekday, weekend, or holiday. Therefore, it is also not known at this time under what law healthcare workers will be paid.
Furthermore, the recent regulation on the legal status of the health service establishes that the exact amount of on-call fees from health workers to doctors and nurses will be decided by the DG of national hospitals. In other words, a decree authorizes OKFŐ to deviate from the duty hour rates prescribed by applicable laws.
In addition, if the picture is still not confusing enough, there is also the issue of collective agreements, after the unions fought in various places in the Hungarian health sector so that workers could enjoy more favorable working conditions than those specified in the law. For example, they could work for higher guard fees.
However, the new Health Status Law prohibits the celebration of this type of collective agreement and the implementing regulation breaks the existing collective agreements.
The prohibition on entering into collective agreements violates fundamental rights on the one hand and also violates international conventions on the other. Unfortunately, it cannot be ruled out that there is a health worker earning less than his current income as of next March, due to the second job license and the prohibition of collective bargaining.
– the president of MOSZ outlined possible negative scenarios.
Holiday decline
Nor does the regulation offer reassuring clarity on the issue of freedoms. This issue is even being analyzed by labor lawyers, and has been debated by prominent professionals.
In any case, professional organizations hope that the ministry, or the new hospital DG, will soon confirm that doctors will have no less freedom than workers in any other domestic sector.
Péter Vámosi reported on other dilemmas.
Instead of calm, general chaos and worry
As they still do not clearly see between rights and obligations, nor do they know exactly what they will basically be like and on whom the working conditions will depend, Zoltán Szabad says that it will be relatively difficult to decide whether someone will move to the new health service status from March.
The epidemic is extremely serious, while health workers must now also concentrate on hiding on the Internet, calling the labor lawyer, the union, to find out what their fate will be in three months. It’s not good that way
– evaluated Zoltán Szabad, why there is uncertainty and anxiety among health workers instead of calm and satisfaction.
(Cover image: MTI. Photographer: Balogh Zoltán)
[ad_2]
