INESS: Slower Increase in Health-care Salaries Will Mean Only Short-term Savings

Bratislava, September 27 (TASR) - Slowing down increases in health-care workers' salaries, which is proposed as part of the consolidation of public finances, is a "mess" of a solution and will bring only short-term savings to the budget, Martin Vlachynsky, an analyst at the Economic and Social Studies Institute (INESS), stated on Friday. "Reducing the percentage of increase will bring more theoretical and mainly short-term savings to the budget. Health-care workers are likely to demand bigger increases from their employers anyway. The labour market allows them to do so," he told TASR. The analyst considers the current so-called salary automaton to be a problem. "It reduces the managerial room for employers to set the remuneration of employees according to the needs of their particular institution, it doesn't take performance into account in terms of quantity or quality," he pointed out, adding that the automaton should be "abandoned" and pay-bargaining left to employees and employers. Vlachynsky described another proposed measure, the transformation of state hospitals into joint-stock companies, as a good step. "It means that hospitals won't be a partly budget-subsidised organisation, i.e. they won't formally fall under a statutory mode of management like a school canteen but will be subject to a set of legal, accounting and administrative rules like any other large productive economic entity," he stated, pointing out that health-care facilities that were transformed 20 years ago are currently doing the best. am/df