Catania One of our last meetings was with Kalina Drenska, one of the LevFem collective. Like so many activists in Romania and Bulgaria, and, truth to tell, everywhere it seems these days when there is so little investment in building progressive capacity, Kalina wears multiple hats. In her “day job,” so to speak she is a program officer for the Bulgarian brank of the Fredrich Ebert Stiftung, a German-based foundation supported by the state and one of the major political parties as part of their foreign investment in civic participation and increasing democracy. She works with various unions and was also involved in the emerging coalition around the current and coming crisis for care and care workers.
The strongest union in Bulgaria, she felt, was the teachers’ union where 95% were organized. They forged a new path with a strike in 2007 for 42 days over wages and working conditions, and have continued to be a strong, aggressive voice for labor. There are also a number of healthcare unions, but they have endured a number of divisions, as different working groups in the sector split off to more effectively win representation and benefits. For example, nurses have now organized a separate union and in recent years have also struck successfully. Social services unions are weaker, relatively speaking. Union federations are much more organized in the public sector with few unions successfully organized in the private sector.
Migration also is a major factor for Bulgarian labor, as it was in Romania. Kalina explained that the country is a labor “donor” to Germany, UK, Italy, Greece, and Austria among other EU countries where wages are better. Bulgaria receives a smaller part of the migratory stream from countries that are poorer because of a restrictive labor code making it difficult to receive work permits.
The labor market situation is an issue in the care sector. The average age of workers in care is around 55 with 30% retiring in the next decade. Where in the US and other western countries many of these jobs are occupied by immigrants, that is less likely the case in Bulgaria.
The nurses protest in 2019 raised these issues right before the pandemic hit, which also politicized the government sufficiently to give frontline, essential workers in the sector a monthly bonus equivalent to $500 USD per month. Although the bonus ended after one year, it highlighted what was possible and is needed to compete for workers in the future. The ratio of nurses to patients ranges from one to 30 on the low and 50 at the highwater mark. The state has tried to fill the gap by forcing young doctors to work to get experience in hospitals during their schooling to offset the shortages in care workers, but that’s a temporary solution.
Kalina was particularly interested in the US development of homecare work and its unionization. As more care is forced into the home in Bulgaria, there is a nascent program but it’s small and disjointed with workers not connected. She was interested in how we had developed an organizing model with this workforce that combined community organizing methodology with labor organizing, so getting her more information is high on our to do list in the follow-up to another fascinating and educational Organizers Forum.
Where to next year, people were wondering? Lots of things seem to be happening in Barcelona, could we afford to go to there and Madrid? How about Korea or Chile? Someone mentioned Croatia? So many people were on holiday in August, might we have to move the calendar back to September again? Would that also attract more people? A lot of questions, but as long as there is interest, the rewards are great, so we’ll keep our passports handy.