Strike of overtime hours and stoppages throughout June: doctors stand up

BarcelonaAfter a May marked by teacher mobilizations, it is now the turn of doctors, who want to carry out stoppages in the healthcare system throughout the State during the entire month of June. Medical unions Ni un minut més, which urges doctors to stop doing any extraordinary voluntary activity outside of working hours.

For the most part, medical protests are based on the need for their own framework statute, the reduction of working days to 35 hours and the improvement of the pay for on-call duties, as well as that they can be voluntary and count towards retirement. Doctors demand an exclusive negotiation area for the profession, a differentiated professional classification and fair working hours, according to the representatives of the Strike Committee. The unions that are part of this committee are Metges de Catalunya (MC), the majority medical union in the country and Catalan representative, the Spanish Confederation of Medical Unions (CESM), the Andalusian Medical Union (SMA), the Association of Doctors and Senior Technicians of Madrid (Amyts), the Basque Medical Union (SME) and the Independent Union of Galician Professionals (O'mega).

The Minister of Health, Mónica García, has insisted that a large part of the doctors' demands are "on the roof of the communities", which must stop "hiding" behind the ministry to not "do their job" to improve their working conditions. García explained that the adaptation of the 35-hour workdays they are demanding is already met by all autonomies, "except Madrid's", which is "the only one that continues to deduct 200 euros from professionals' on-call duties" since 2012, and that the scope of their own negotiation "is an exclusive competence, according to the basic statute of public employees, of the communities". The unions, on the other hand, have lamented that "once again" Health has not put "any proposal on the table that allows progress" in de-escalating the conflict.

Overtime strike

Concurrently, the director of the Servei Català de la Salut (CatSalut), Alfredo García Díaz, has quantified the short-term impact of the overtime strike at between 15% and 20% on activity for the campaign, in which 110 services from 27 public and contracted hospitals have decided not to work extra hours. This implies that many services may be suspended and, consequently, some waiting lists may also be extended. The campaign is part of the doctors' mobilizations to request improvements from the department in the face of work overload and to recover healthcare quality. Despite everything, Metges de Catalunya wants to highlight "the impossibility of the healthcare system to move forward and not collapse".

According to the union, the system "is held up by the professionals' overexertion", and the excessive waiting times to access operations, specialist visits, and diagnostic tests are proof that "there are not enough hands". Among those who have already communicated that they are joining the campaign are anesthesiology services from hospitals such as Bellvitge, Vall d'Hebron, Sant Pau, del Mar, Parc Taulí, Germans Trias i Pujol, and Josep Trueta, as indicated by the union, which anticipates that the list of adhesions will still grow, also including primary care centers (CAP). The union estimates that extraordinary activity, or overtime, can represent practically 30% of healthcare activity, although it has clarified that it does not have official data.

García Díaz admitted in an interview on Els Matins on 3CatInfo that the situation "is worrying" and will affect waiting lists. However, he qualified that "in the medium term, the centers have mechanisms to respond", and stressed that these are services contracted by the department. The director of CatSalut expressed that they are "open to dialogue" and, at the same time, acknowledged that there is no shortage of professionals, but that their distribution "is not entirely adequate". He also defended that the negotiation "is not stalled" and that "more than 20 meetings" have been held.