Salaries have been an issue among doctors for a while. The outgoing government in 2022 increased registered nurses’ salaries, which introduced certain additional imbalances and dissatisfactions. As soon as the current Minister of Health, Danijel Bešić Loredan, entered office in June 2022, physicians’ demands related to salary were immediately presented to him. Though there was a grace period during the summer, demands were reinitiated in autumn, and a doctors’ strike was called in October 2022. However, after assurances from the Minister of Health who announced the preparation of new solutions for doctors’ salaries, Fides, the doctors’ trade union, suspended the strike.
The strike’s main demand was increases for all doctors, including those in the highest levels, which currently cannot exceed the 57th level of the public sector scheme. Fides urged for this threshold to be opened, and that salaries for senior doctors be allowed to increase up to six additional levels.
When the Ministry of Health rejected these demands, the strike was reopened and announced for 11 January 2023. One day before, mediation was started by the President of the Slovenian Medical Society. It ended in compromise: in return for cancelling the strike, the Minister of Health promised to establish a new health pillar for the public servants’ salary system. This should lead to the proposal being formulated by 1 April 2023 and presented to the Parliament for adoption until 30 June 2023. It should thus be enacted on 1 January 2024. Should that not happen, then the Government is committed to establishing separate negotiations with medical doctors alone.