Angry with the lack of a general agreement with the local government over their rights and obligations, 61 of the 90 doctors and dentists in the town of Zivinice signed their resignations on Tuesday.

Those will be effective in seven days if the local government of the Tuzla Canton does not fulfill their demand.

According to Bosnia’s laws, apart from the Labour Law, the rights of workers are protected and regulated by Collective Contracts made between their professional unions and the government.

The doctors complain that they are not represented enough in the union of health workers and they want their own union which would then separately sign a collective contract with the government.

The law, however, says that in order to have a separate union, a profession has to have more than 30 percent of members in the existing union, which is not the case in the Tuzla Canton. The number of doctors and dentists is far below the required 30 percent.

To force the local government to agree to their demand, the doctors have threatened to collectively resign. This would cause a collapse of the local healthcare system.

“The choice is simple,” said the representative of the group of doctors, Admir Suljic.

“Either we are recognized as doctors and we can represent ourselves or the Tuzla Canton health care system will collapse,” he said.