ELA, LAB, UGT and CCOO ask that “the service be improved with more workers, not fewer, and with real and direct control by the Administration.”
ELA, LAB, UGT and CCOO have demanded that the Basque Government maintain the 60 workers and the 6 vehicles of the infectious ambulance service enabled as pandemic reinforcement and whose withdrawal as of October 8 it was announced by the regional executive.
In a joint statement, the four unions have denounced that the Basque Government, with this decision, is going to dismiss part of the personnel who have fought the pandemic “on the front line.”
The centrals have criticized that said announcement was made just 48 hours before suppressing it and that, 20 months and about 5,000 deaths later due to the pandemic, the Basque Government communicated on October 6 that on October 8 it was withdrawing the 6 ambulances from infectious diseases (covid-19), thus laying off about 60 workers.
From the point of view of the unions, it was already “clear” before the pandemic that emergencies and urgent ambulance services were already overwhelmed, with “brutal” workloads and that, during the pandemic, “politicians said that the service had to be supported and strengthened “.
However, these announcements “have fallen on deaf ears” today, according to the centrals, since these dismissals are the way in which the Basque Government and private companies “thank the services provided: at 20:00, I applaud you, and at 9:00 pm I say goodbye because I no longer need you. “
For ELA, LAB, UGT and CCOO “all these ambulances are needed and necessary, with and without covid-19” since the Basque health system “has been obsolete for years” and they have drawn attention to what may happen with the arrival of the flu or if in December, January or earlier there is a re-outbreak “.
For the four unions “it is clear that the privatization of these services only degrades a public service, essential as has been demonstrated in the pandemic, a public service for and by the Basques, not for doing business.”
For all this, these unions demand the reinstatement of all workers that they are going to be fired and the return of those six ambulances that will be withdrawn from the service, to be allocated, either for covid-19, influenza, or for the correct functioning of the urgent and concerted transport network of the CAV “.
They also ask that “the service is improved with more workers, not less, and with a real and direct control by the Administration “.
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