Nurses protest in Sliven, Bulgaria. Photo provided by the Union of the Bulgarian Nurses with permission to republish. In early November, something unprecedented happened in Bulgaria: Dr. Georgi Zhelyazkov, the director of a key hospital in the city of Dobrich, the capital of the North Eastern province bordering Romania and the Black Sea, filed a lawsuit against 136 medical workers who, as he found out, intended to participate in an strike to demand better working conditions and higher wages. The next judiciary session is going to be in March this year. Nevertheless, the medics started their strike on November 10. Over the next days, some of the strikers withdrew, but around 30 nurses, one doctor and two health officers continued protesting. At the time of publishing, the strike is on hold while the trial is being held. For many of the protesters, it was nevertheless symbolic, as they continued covering shifts. The protesters couldn't afford to lose their income, and they couldn't leave their patients and allow the medical system to collapse without them. In 2019 and 2020, nurses all over Bulgariastarted series of protests. They paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, as their focus shifted towards ensuring survival for the patients and themselves. Meanwhile Bulgarian authorities failed to fulfill their promise to bring the medical workers’ salaries up to the level of basic minimal salary of BGN 1500 (around USD 815). Public appreciation for their importance to society during the pandemic didn't lasted long. Nurses complained to Global Voices of another insufficient media coverage of their recent October protests in the Bulgarian cities of Sliven, Dobrich, Vratsa, Kyustendil, and Blagoevgrad. Key demands include implementation of a minimum salary within the sector — which was already negotiated with the government, but has not been approved by all hospitals so far. Others demands included increasing pay for night shifts, and increase of the value of food vouchers provided. The collective agreement was made on a three-sided negotiated basis — between the state, trade unions and medical workers. However, such an agreement, the sector collective labor contract, has a prescriptive function. As representatives of the nurses explained to Global Voices, the increased salaries for medics, as stipulated in the collective agreement, doesn't automatically lead to an increase of remuneration at a specific hospital, which has to make its own decision. Therefore, the strike in Dobrich, organized by the Union of the Bulgarian Nurses put the demands for increased salaries to the employer, the Multiprofile Hospital for Active Treatment, Dobrich. This union is an alternative to trade unions operating at the national level and is a key organizer of protests in other cities, like Sliven, located in Central Bulgaria.It was registered in 2019, and is lead by non-conformist medics who want to change the situation of the nurses in the context of the health system by reaching the minimal levels of basic salaries previously negotiated between the state, syndicates and hospitals for the medical workers. Nurses from Tervel express solidarity with nurses from Dobrich. Photo provided by the Union of the Bulgarian Nurses with permission to republish. And while Bulgarian media and society don't express explicit concern for these issues, many nurses continue working more than 12 hours a day. According to the Union of the Bulgarian Nurses, at some hospitals they take shifts of a 24- or even 36-hour duration. Also, many of them work at several places at the same time to make ends meet. In the meantime, the overall number of nurses on a national level also shrinks, and many of them are either in pre-or post-pension age. Maya Ilieva, a well-known activist among her peers, is a key participant in the Dobrich protest. А representative of the Union of the Bulgarian Nurses, she has 27 years of work experience, of which 23 years were spent as a reanimation nurse in the capital's heart surgery hospital. During the protests in 2019, she was dismissed from the Tokuda hospital in Sofia. Ilieva sued her employer and won the trial at first instance, and at the moment her case is under Court of Appeals. She has also won five lawsuits against the same hospital, including a discrimination complaint, with the court deciding that basis of the discrimination was her trade union affiliation. In 2019, when the alternative union was registered, Ilieva was chosen as head of the Board. After her dismissal from the Tokuda hospital the same year, she started working in another hospital in the same city. When the pandemic started, she was among the first volunteers for the COVID-19 Reanimation Ward.