Sick and tired

In the continuing struggle over increased pay for Poland's health-sector workers, a protest by nurses in Warsaw was broken up by riot police on June 20. The clash raised the stakes in the already bitter standoff between the government and doctors, nurses, and hospital workers, who have been on strike for the past several weeks.

Hundreds of hospitals have been affected by the strikes. Protesters are calling for reform of Poland's lumbering healthcare service, and say that if their demands are not met, they will join the millions of Poles who have already left the country for better-paying jobs in Western Europe. Polish healthcare workers make far less than their Western European counterparts.

Dozens of protesters - mostly women - were forced off a street in front of the office of Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński, where they had camped in tents overnight. A police spokesperson said minimum force was used to disperse the protesters.

However, the demonstrators didn't see it that way. "They treated us like hooligans in a stadium," said Izabella Szczepaniak, president of the Association of Nurses and Midwives. "They pressed us against the barriers so hard we could hardly breathe ... Police should not treat health workers like criminals."

Leaders of the demonstration said several nurses had been roughed up.

Opposition leaders have called for an investigation into the nurses' treatment.

PM Kaczyński has offered healthcare workers pay rises of 15 percent per year over the coming three years, but protesters say wages were already low to begin with, and that wages in other professions are rising faster.

The Prime Minister has said he is ready to negotiate, but would not deviate from "economic realities." Polish wages rose almost nine percent year-on-year in May, fueling expectations that Poland's central bank would raise interest rates in the near future. (Reuters)