Friday, March 29

The Basque Public Health unions show their strength with two strikes in the middle of the electoral campaign


All the Osakidetza unions have shown their strength this Thursday in the first of the two days of strike called in the middle of the electoral campaign to pressure the Department of Health to improve the working conditions of the workforce, increase the number of workers and put an end to it. to what they consider to be the progressive dismantling of the Basque public health system, an extreme that the government of Iñigo Urkullu vehemently denies. The minimum services decreed for both health centers and hospitals, equivalent to those of a public holiday, have been met, but the unions assure that the rest of the workers are overwhelmingly supporting this strike, at least 50%, with special incidence of Primary Care, proof of the “fed up that there is in the workforce,” he says. The strike will continue this Friday.

EA, Bildu, again EA, PNV and now GH: Gorroño, the eternal mayor of Gernika with his fifth initials

Further

The centrals have also criticized the “manipulation” that, in their opinion, Osakidetza makes of the unemployment monitoring data, without taking into account that the majority of the personnel is fulfilling minimum services that they describe as “abusive”. For example, the Department of Health has minimized the impact of the strike, ensuring that the night shift that started the strike did not exceed 0.10% of the staff. However, the unions recall that practically all the workers who cover the night shift are in minimum services. Regarding the morning shift, Osakidetza does not attribute the unemployment to more than 9.98% of the staff, compared to 50% of which the centrals speak.

The calling unions, SATSE, ELA, LAB, SME, CCOO and UGT, -ESK calls the strike separately- have jointly pointed out that Primary Care is the area in which the strike has been most noticeable, which “ evidence, once again, both the precarious situation that supports this level of care, as well as the fed up of the staff”. In this sense, they have indicated that the health centers of Zaramaga, Salburua and San Martín, in Vitoria, have woken up closed. Like those of Lasarte-Oria, Zaratamo, Gernika or Lemoa. In centers such as Basauri or Hernani, only the minimum services are working and in Galdakao or Arrigorriaga the follow-up has also been very extensive. It must be taken into account that many health centers remain closed on weekends and you must go to the PAC, which is the one to which minimum services have been imposed. In the rural area of ​​Álava, which supported a day of strike on April 27, the follow-up is being 80% according to the centrals.

They also talk about massive follow-up at other levels of care, such as “the Cruces Hospital warehouse where only one person has worked or the MRI service that is closed.” Or Usansolo endoscopy and operating rooms that are working only with the minimum services, with an impact also in this “very important” hospital in the outpatient nursing. They also ensure that “in the OSI Araba operating rooms have been closed and it is worth noting the high incidence in the lightning service.” In the Donostia Hospital, for its part, the major ambulatory surgery service has woken up with only the minimum services and in Zumarraga, the operating rooms are closed“. The Basque Center for Transfusions and Human Tissues, which is also in a fight with Osakidetza over its own confiict, has supported the strike regardless of the minimum services, and, for example, “no bus has left for donations”.

“And all this, despite totally abusive minimum services that have left thousands of workers of the 42,300 who were called to strike without the right to strike,” say the centrals. “We are facing a new attempt to neutralize, impede and attack the right to strike of the collective”, since they denounce that some OSI have interpreted the order of the Department of Labor and Employment “in the most restrictive way possible”, imposing the realization of minimum services “beyond the content in it”.

“There is a problem of lack of doctors, but the origin is not in the Basque Country,” says the counselor

The Minister of Health, Gotzone Sagardui, just started the strike day, has denied the biggest, the dismantling of public health. She has pointed out that the “expenditure and investment data show the opposite”, while “the convening unions have not presented a single piece of data that justifies the discourse of the dismantling of Osakidetza”, she stated in a statement.

Sagardui has recognized “that there is a problem”, which “has never been hidden”, which is “the lack of family medicine professionals that affects outpatient clinics and emergencies”. But he has denied that the origin is in Euskadi. “It affects all the health services in the State and also in Europe”, he said. And he assures that “the solutions will come in the long term”. “This is a situation with which we will have to live for a while planning solutions so that, if not in a center, in the closest one, attention is guaranteed”, he emphasizes.

In this sense, he recalled that there are five Public Job Offers underway to stabilize more than 11,000 jobs. “It is a third of the Osakidetza staff, whose structural positions have grown in two years by 3,500 positions,” he points out. Regarding the budget allocated by the Government, he stressed that “it has gone from allocating 1,800 euros to 2,114 euros for health spending per person per year”, and has valued all the investments in progress, as Lehendakari Urkullu himself has already done on Wednesday in an electoral act recalling the commitment to start up the Tolosa hospital.

During the demonstrations that have toured the Basque capitals in the morning and the concentrations in front of the health centers at noon, the unions have demanded that the Minister of Health sit down to negotiate. “Osakidetza has to read what the Osakidetza staff is transmitting loud and clear, that we want the rights of the staff to be guaranteed and for collective bargaining to be recovered,” said Amaia Mayor of the SATSE union. For her part, Esther Saavedra from ELA has assured that the unions will continue to mobilize if there is no response from the department and she sits down to negotiate. She has reminded Saavedra that there is a “blockade of the sectoral table. There is no content.” “The situation is serious, we need solutions now, and if they don’t exist we will continue with the mobilizations,” she says. “We are disgusted. We defend public health. They are not restructuring, they are dismantling”, LAB has claimed. For now, the strike continues this Friday, with demonstrations called at noon in Bilbao, Donostia and Vitoria.



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