For the company that manages the University Hospital of Torrejón de Ardoz, the image they project is very important. So much so, when the different Hospital workers unions announced a concentration on Wednesday morning at the main door to request better working conditions, the directive ordered to cover with a blue canvas the word Torrejón of the entrance poster and, in full protest, sent several employees to give a hand of paint to the road signs of the pavement, to prevent the protesters from being placed there. Even so, more than 300 workers have gathered outside the center to express their discomfort with management. Employees say that the company takes measures such as prohibiting water bottles on the tables or jackets in the back of the chair “not to affirm the aesthetics of the center.” They do, they say, to hide the job precariousness of the service. “If the company took care of workers as it takes care of their image, we would be very good,” says a protester through the speaker with which he encourages the crowd.
This public private management hospital is well known for its maternity service ,. It is the fifth center by amount of births (2,024) in the region according to the latest published data, of 2023, a very striking figure if one takes into account that it only has 250 beds. According to its website, units such as 3D mammography, stroke, prostate and cardiology surgery are also referents. The Torrejón hospital is assigned to the population residing in the municipalities of Ajalvir, Daganzo, Fresno de Torote, Torrejón de Ardoz and Ribatejada, but, for its management model, it receives an extra payment from the community for each person to which it attends. For these reasons they care especially about maintaining a good image.
For the Digestive Surgeon Enrique Esteban, the loss of workers, much with more than a decade of experience, in services such as the ICU, anesthesiology, endocrinology and the pain unity, speaks better of working conditions than the words. “We had outstanding of care and patient safety,” says Esteban. According to account, for two years the attention has been deteriorated due to the change in management, which now has a “very disrespectful” style with the workers. “We have lost a lot of historical professionals who helped the quality of care to be very high. They have managed to fart from workers and dynamite the service.” Although the demand of the Torrejón hospital grows, the template far from following the rhythm, decreases, according to the surgeon. “Every time we serve more population and more population from outside.”
The latest data from the Community of Madrid about this hospital show that in 2022 15,677 incoming appointments were performed, that is, specifically from outside patients who access the free choice system, and in 2023 the number amounted to 24,377, an increase of 55%. The template of the medical-chef area from 2022 to 2023, however, fell from 318 to 302 workers and in the nursing area they went from 670 to 655.
Tania García, president of the Company Committee and spokesman for the Satse Madrid Union, says that more than 50% of the nursing staff are new income. In the last year and a half, he details, only in the Emergency Department 29 nurses have left for a 42nd template. Many services are only renewing them with commercial personnel, who are external workers hired for a short time. The hospital uses an application called LIVO that works on demand.
The method is as follows: an offer is launched for a nurse to work the next day at the UCI, the interested party points and the hospital makes a contract for the necessary time at that time. Virginia Romero, an emergency nurse, says that the problem of these minimum contracts is that each new employee must be taught from scratch how the service works and that many do not endure a complete turn due to work pressure. “It’s not that there are no market staff, they don’t take care of the one,” he concludes.
Several nurses confirm that they would prefer to be fired, because they would receive compensation for unfair dismissal and have a mattress to find another job. “The company does not want to pay, so it prefers to treat us worse so that we give up, above all the oldest, that we are the ones that put limits,” says one of them, who has preferred not to say his name for fear of reprisals, in the midst of the cries of “fewer ties and more bats.” The hospital directive prohibited workers in service from carrying stickers alluding to the claims that were heard at the hospital door, that the windows appear or that they went down to the concentration in their free schedule.
“We ended up taking the work at the expense of our effort,” says Yaiza Fernández, gynecologist and delegate of Amyts. He says that workers feel “very little care” and even more if they compare with their classmates hired by the Madrid Health Service (Sermas). “We stop ourselves because when applying to an OPE [Ofertas Públicas de Empleo] Our time worked has half, ”he explains. The professionals of the concerted centers have been complaining for a long time that they are treated as“ second doctors ”, due to the disadvantage with which they start when presenting in the OPE, for which they must accumulate a certain number of points, among which the time has worked. While those of public health have 0.18 points for each month of work, those of the private Period, and in other cases, he has not even told them.
Patients are not at all happy either, especially those assigned to this hospital by default, say the protesters. According to the Stephen surgeon, “they wait for their quotes more than those from outside because they represent profits and those do not.” Mari Carmen Velasco, neighbor of Torrejón, went to the concentration to support doctors who sound their whistles without stopping in an attempt to hear their demands. Velasco knows from within the problems they face, since she has a pediatric daughter working in this center, but she herself assures that she has been waiting to be treated in the pain unit and, although she puts claims every 15 days, she still has no answer. “Two days ago I was attended by a surgeon who sent me to make me a TAC,” he says. A friend who is next to her tells her that because of the noise of the whistles they will now have to come to attend with the otter, but another beyond clarifies that be careful, because they surely do not attend it soon.
