News

UNO backs down on pay

Nicargua’s right-wing government has been forced to increase health workers’ pay and commit extra resources to the country’s beleaguered health service, following a hunger strike by doctors and nurses and work stoppages by thousands of health staff.

Industrial action by health workers started at the end of January when staff at a children’s hospital in the capital Managua declared a work stoppage to focus attention on their subsistence wages and to call for more resources for the health service.

Inflation of more than 13,000% last year had reduced pay to poverty levels and left hospitals and clinics throughout the country with no medical supplies.

’Everyone thought it would stop at the children’s hospital,’ Mary Zuniga, a community worker in central America for 20 years told healthmatters. ‘But the government didn’t respond.’

By the middle of February more than 16,000 health workers had joined the action, and 21 doctors and nurses had started a hunger strike.

The answer of the UNO coalition government was to introduce a national austerity programme on March 3, devaluing the currency by 500% and increasing the costs of basis food and fuel. The net effect was to reduce wages by about 60%.

At the end of March, however, the government was finally forced to increase health workers’ pay and pledge extra resources to the health sector when workers from many industries joing the strike, threatening the whole of the government’s economic plan.

Public sympathy was also very much with the health workers as one of the hunger strikers came close to the brink of death.

Workers in most other sectors of the economy had their pay reduced in line with the austerity plan.

The country’s trade unions have given the government until the end of May to get Nicaragua’s hyperinflation under control or further industrial action may follow.