Those of the Community of Madrid under concerted regime that achieve public financing for next year will not have to guarantee a minimum of cleaning, kitchen and maintenance personnel within their workforce. Although this standard will not prevent workers from being hired for cleaning tasks if they can promote less workers than necessary to maintain the minimum conditions, with the consequences that both decisions can bring for the quality of care. This is the scenario that has denounced the Union Commissions Workers Health Madrid and that derives from the decision of the Ministry of Social Affairs of the region, which has suppressed the 2026 framework agreement the minimum ratio of 0.15 for the cleaning, cooking and maintenance personnel that appeared in the previous one, of 2021.
That ratio means that, currently, concerted residences must have an approximate minimum of five cleaning workers every day for every 100 residents. Among them they have to distribute the morning and afternoon shifts, and divide in each one to go to laundry, make all the rooms, clean the common areas, attend the dining room and distribute the clothes to the rest of the workers.
“How can it be that there are only five people to do all that job?” Asked Juani Peñafiel, responsible for private and concerted residences of CC OO Health Madrid. Peñafiel considers that the current ratio is already low, so that each company is now left the decision to hire the personnel they consider convenient.
The Community of Madrid is located until August 8, in the total financing and partial financing mode, for the next two years, and it is the framework agreement that regulates the conditions that each company has to meet. According to CC OO, in a context where the most economical offer is the one that wins the tender, eliminating the minimum ratio of cleaning, kitchen and maintenance employees “is equivalent to opening the door to template cuts, externalizations and precariousness, which inevitably has an impact on the quality of the service” and “seriously compromises the health and well -being of the elderly.”
A spokesman for the Ministry of Social Affairs defends that although there is no minimum ratio established for cleaning, cooking and maintenance personnel, “each center is subjected to a minimum of two annual inspections, to two visits from the technicians to review the fulfillment of the feeding audits and feeding audits.”
It clarifies that in the cleaning section, the agreement requires “in detail” the daily conditions and the quality certifications that must be met; In addition to contemplating “serious penalties” for each breach, either in the rooms, beds, bedding, toilets or common spaces.
Six outbreaks of scabies and bed bugs in the last year
CC OO argues that in the last year it has registered at least six squire outbreaks (scabies) and beds in several Madrid residences – one of them with 106 residents -, which is directly related to the lack of hygiene. The administration spokesman ensures that for these situations the centers “are obliged to have contingency plans that include the demands of cleaning and disinfection and inventory protocols of disinfection material”, but has not clarified whether those that had these outbreaks were sanctioned in some way.
Peñafiel adds that, even if you have a protocol, it is very difficult to eradicate the outbreak if there are not enough personnel to carry it out. Therefore, he says, there are residences that have been “months” with that problem and that “right now there is one that still has it”, although by privacy does not specify the name of any of the affected centers.
“Personalized attention is what you sell,” says Peñafiel. “But the quality of care comes from the staff that gives it.” A study of this year of several associations, among which was CC OO, indicated that in the private sector – they are a majority within the 515 residences that the community has, where only 25 are direct public management and 18 are indirect or concerted management.
The Ministry emphasizes that the new framework agreement involves a “record” investment of 942 million euros for the next two years and a budget increase per square of 20%. And that, even more, “provides for direct care personnel ratios that exceed what is established in state regulations”, something that the union does not share, and for what complained to know the new framework agreement.
Other complaints that have regarding the document are the expansion of the outsourcing of essential professionals such as doctors, nurses, physiotherapists or psychologists, because it will generate “fragmentation, precariousness and instability in the templates” and permission to use telemedicine “without a strict regulation”. To this they add that a favorable measure such as the fifth meal, or Recale, will be difficult to comply with the little staff with which they have, even more in the night shifts.
