Russia’s public healthcare system is facing significant problems, and staff are coming out as a result. Ambulance teams in Penza region, central Russia, recently called a work-to-rule action, bringing out more than 100 people in support of better wages and conditions, on the heels of a similar action by Novgorod region ambulance teams.
This wave of mobilisation is connected to serious overwork, staff cutbacks and shortages - which have arisen as part of the Russian government’s “May Decrees” initiative. These decrees, initially signed on the eve of Putin’s third inauguration in 2012 and recently updated, are designed to modernise Russia’s healthcare and education sectors, transferring financial responsibility to regional units while cutting back on federal grants. At the same time, these decrees linked pay rises for public sector personnel across the country to targets on pay and performance - which ended in significantly increasing workloads for healthcare staff. Naturally, this led to dissatisfaction.
Russia’s Action (Deistvie) trade union was founded in 2012 by healthcare workers from Moscow and Izhevsk, and a 2013 work-to-rule action in the latter brought its first success. Medics in the city organised a slowdown by performing their roles according to official guidelines, in order to show how their system was running on (excessive) overtime. Today, the union has 60 branches across 40 of Russia’s 85 regions, and is part of a growing independent trade union movement in the country.
