After three years of negotiations in, the law that governs the fundamental lines of the working conditions of 700,000 public employees, the Ministry of Health and the unions seem increasingly remote. The draft, an extensive document that, among many other measures, reduces medical guards and modifies the professional categories, has been rejected with mobilizations of the sector (a massive further took place this Wednesday in front of the Ministry headquarters) and two specific strikes of doctors: the second, this Friday.
It is possible that some consultations are affected, but urgent processes are guaranteed thanks to minimum services. In the last strike, the tracking was disparate and its incidence varied greatly depending on territories, even centers within the same cities. Not being mandatory to notify which professionals will go to unemployment, it is impossible to know which citizens can affect.
Beyond the strike, discontent is generalized among workers’ representatives, but there are several sensibilities. On the one hand, that of the main medical unions, and on the other, the rest of the workers of the system: nurses, auxiliaries, wardens, even doctors not associated with the specific unions of the profession.
All agree on claiming 35 -hour days, salary improvements, possibility of partial and anticipated retirement, and conciliation measures, among others. Doctors also want their own statute to regulate what they consider to be specific conditions, given their greatest training and responsibility in the system.
Health has repeatedly denied this. The last time, at a meeting with the strike committee, this week. “The Ministry considers this unacceptable proposal, since it would mean the common framework that guarantees the cohesion of the National Health System (SNS) and open a segregation route for a single collective, to the detriment of the rest of health professionals and the organization of the system itself,” says the department of Mónica García in a statement.
Defend that the current draft already incorporates improvements specifically to the medical group: a specific chapter dedicated to the doctors, public job offers (OPE) every two years to end the temporality, ease of geographical mobility with open and permanent competitions every year …
The Ministry proposes to replace a 2003 standard that all parties consider outdated by another with improvements in the conditions that seem insufficient, unrealistic or both.
“The meetings with the Ministry are disappointing,” complains Miguel Lázaro, president of the State Confederation of Medical Unions (CESM), which has summoned Friday’s strike with the Andalusian medical union. “It does not address the main Achilles heel of the system, let’s make your own medical statute to capture and loyalty professionals, incentive, that does not discriminate against us, that allows you to reconcile,” he adds.
The trade union organizations present in the field of negotiation (Satse-FSES, FSS-CCOO, UGT, CSIF and CIG-SAÚDE), which demonstrated on Wednesday in front of the ministry, complain about the “lack of respect” of the minister to the health personnel, in the words of Fernando Hontangas, president of the Health Sector of CSIF. “They intend to give folder [al texto] Not including essential issues: fair remuneration, 35 -hour days, realistic and healthy, right to early retirement, ”he adds.
At the last meeting, held this Thursday, Health promised to hold monographic meetings on these issues.
Work Days
The text includes a remodeling of the days and guards, which are one of the star health measures. They are now 24 hours, something that, with a top of 45 hours of weekly work for the professionals who do them. It is insufficient for unions, which ask that the maximum be 35 in all autonomous communities.
They also want the hours of the guards to be recognized as extra hours, which would mean greater remuneration and their counting, which would facilitate them, for example, an early retirement. Health considers that in the public service there are no overtime and therefore the guards are a different type of day from the ordinary.
In addition, the Ministry replicates that the establishment of complementary remuneration is autonomous competence. “Imposing remuneration minimal from the State could generate conflicts of powers,”.
Professional categories
The statute includes a modification of the professional categories that correspond to the new structure of university degrees. Specialist doctors are expected to be level 8, specialist nurses Level 7, and so on.
Laura Villaseñor, spokesman for the Satse Nursing Union, believes that the new classification can remain in a change of nomenclature if there are no remuneration modifications. “We want to know what they mean. Not that they mark amounts, but what we are talking about with those categories,” he says.
This opens one of the great melons of the statute: the hiring of health personnel is the competence of the autonomous communities, and it is they who must set salaries. Given the requests for remuneration improvements of the unions, Health commissioned a report to the General Directorate of Professional Planning, which concludes that it is not the responsibility of the Framework Statute, a national law that will have to be approved ultimately in the Congress of Deputies.
Culmination
The minister said on Wednesday at a press conference that the text “is not going to contain things that it cannot contain.” He set the example of remuneration and retirement. “They belong to other legal texts and we cannot invade the competences. The statute regulates the basic conditions in which our professionals have to work, gives them rights and duties that have to be common to all health professionals,” he said.
Given this argument, Villaseñor complains that they do not negotiate with health, but with an entire government: “It is the obligation of the Ministry to make efforts with other departments and with the autonomous communities to reach consensus.”
On Thursday, at the first meeting that laid to Health, the unions and the autonomous communities, the workers’ representatives complained that the Ministries of the Treasury or public function did not attend. They also criticized that the autonomic responsible “have transferred their interest that the norm is emptied of content” on the argument of an alleged invasion of competences.
It will not be saved “in a drawer”
Despite the discrepancies, many of which seem irresoluble, the minister has made clear this week that the text will continue its processing: “We will not put it in a drawer, we are not going to throw a work of three years and 60 sessions that have led to very substantial improvements in the working conditions of our professionals.”
Garcia remained open to dialogue, but suggested that, with or without agreement, he will continue his course: “He has to reach the Council of Ministers and has to go to the next phase, which is that of the public audience and the presentation of the amendments by the parliamentary groups. We will not stop it.”
The unions, in a joint statement, reject this possibility: “It is necessary to continue working in the Framework Statute, within the framework of the scope of negotiation, to prevent the government from passing a harmful, scar and unfair law.”
