Personnal assistants in Slovenia will go on strike
The International Labour Network of Solidarity and Struggle supports their struggle!
CEDRA - SOA
Personal assistants in Slovenia are on strike and they need wide international support in their fight to secure stable financing and an adequate level of quality of services for the beneficiaries of personal assistance. The Personal assistants union (SOA - https://www.facebook.com/sindikat.osebne.asistence/) organize the strike .The trade union was established, with Cedra’s cooperation, in 2020, with a progressive, working-class, perspective.
On the 25th of May 2023, personal assistants in Slovenia will go on strike, for the first time in history, in order to protect and improve the working conditions of workers in personal assistance and to improve the quality of services for the users of personal assistance. Furthermore, the strike will also emphasize the increasingly insufficient public funding of personal assistance, and the reduction of workers' conditions, especially when it comes to paid leave, benefits, and the amount of work obligations.
The underfinancing of personal assistance already began under the previous government and it continues with all fervor under the current one, which is causing an unacceptable lowering of the already low standards of personal assistance. The government continues to repeat the mantra that personal assistance is too expensive and wasteful and that is why it’s necessary to urgently lower the finances allocated for personal assistance and to reduce the rights of beneficiaries and the conditions of workers. Such cuts are unacceptable!
The underlying problem lies in the lack of a concrete vision for long-term care in Slovenia, which must become sufficiently publicly funded and available to all who would need its services.
Because the government and other actors are not willing to listen to workers, the workers in the personal assistance field had no other choice but to declare a strike!
The demands, put out by the Personal Assistants’ union (SOA) are:
- Sufficient funding of personal assistance, which will enable workers to get paid leave and allowances to the extent and amounts recognized as maximum "eligible costs" by the Personal Assistance Rules.
- The finalization of the collective agreement for the activity of personal assistance.
- The adoption of standards and norms of activities.
- Ensuring the protection of the rights and position of personal assistants in the case of supervision of individual personal assistance providers as alleged violators (uninterrupted payment of personal income, etc.), and in the case of withdrawal of the status of personal assistance provider ex officio, the takeover of users and assistants by other personal assistance providers only in a manner that is in accordance with the labor law regulation.
- Immediate cessation of pressure by the Ministry of Labour, Family and Social Affairs on personal assistance providers to force the latter to illegally record the hours of service performed through the Personal Assistance application (and to find a more appropriate, legal solution for this control).
- Payment of the strike.
