Employees of the Social Service Agency made a decision to go on strike and submitted a statement to the Ministry of Health.

According to Solidarity Network lawyer Davit Tomsarashvili, the mediation and negotiation process with the Ministry of Health has failed and 390 people across the country will go on strike from January 17. The protest will continue until the demands are fully met.

"Employees of the Social Service Agency had and still have a collective dispute with the agency. These people have been demanding decent working conditions and decent pay for years, however, unfortunately, both the mediation process and the subsequent negotiation process have failed. The agency has been taking our protest lightly for so long, which has led us to the relevant result.

Yesterday we sent a message to both the agency and the minister that from January 17 the 390 employees of the Social Service Agency will go on strike, which means that most of the centers will cease to function. These people are going on strike across the country. We continue to fight, we continue to negotiate, however these people have once and for all renounced slave conditions and now we have resorted to an extreme form of protest and will be on strike until our demands are met.

As for the demands, one of the main demands of these people is a 100% increase in salaries, given that these people have been working for years on a salary that makes it impossible to live. In some cases, they receive lower pay than socially vulnerable people receive assistance. These people are asking for transportation costs. They have to move around Georgia and have to pay for transportation from their own pockets. Also, the union demands the conclusion of a collective agreement. They demand that their wages increase in relation to inflation every year. Also, these people demand decent working conditions like insurance and so on. For about 12 years the salaries of these people have been unchanged. Fixed salary of social agents is 200 GEL net, plus bonuses according to workload. Unfortunately, negotiations came to a standstill when we learned that the minister had resigned. We asked for communication, but after that the communication was actually stopped," said Solidarity Network lawyer Davit Tomsarashvili.

source: IPN