Notable incidence in the first hours of the Osakidetza Primary Care strike, according to the unions

Osakidetza faces this Friday a day of strike in primary careorganized by the main unions to denounce the “serious problems” of public health, which affect both the workforce and users.

From ELA they have already valued as “successful” the response of the staff to the strike call and that “the health centers have closed”.

do #SOSosakidetza

OTSAILAK FEBRUARY 25 – GREBA LEHEN ARRETAN @osakidetzaEJGV #Osakidetza !!

OSASUN ZENTROAK ITXITA DAUDE!!!
THE HEALTH CENTERS HAVE CLOSED!!

ARRAKASTATSUA LEHEN #greave EGUNA.
SUCCESSFUL ON THE FIRST DAY OF #Strike . pic.twitter.com/poUevhoeRc

— ELA Osakidetza (@ELAOsakidetza) February 25, 2022

Amaia Mayor, from the nursing union SATSEhas assured that the monitoring of the strike is being “very good”, because the Osakidetza professionals are “fed up”, with “a lot of overload”.

The union representative has said that the current demands are not new, that “they come from 2019”, and that they are due to “lack of professionals”. For this reason, they claim to “reduce precariousness” and “replace absences from the first day”, among other things.

Faced with these requests, SATSE does not see a “plan” from Osakidetza, and dismisses the call for the sectoral table as a maneuver “to deactivate the strike“.

For his part, the Secretary General of UGT, Raul Arzahas affirmed that the union does not seek to “perpetuate” the mobilization in Osakidetza, but has demanded that a response be given to the “problems” that Basque public health is experiencing.

In statements to Radio Vitoria, Arza acknowledged that the UGT was “surprised” by the Ministry’s announcement in the same week that the mobilizations began, an issue that seems “suspicious” to him.

As reported, health workers, and specifically primary care, already carried out three days of mobilizations in 2019 demanding “a greater effort by Osakidetza to respond to the needs of workers.”

“Mainly a problem with Osakidetza, which is the stability of the templates. That is what the Basque Government should focus on,” he claimed, while warning that 40% of temporary employment is suffered.

sector table

Satse, ELA, LAB, CCOO and UGT have come together to call strikes when the negotiations of the representatives of the workers and the Department of Health are practically brokenafter the centrals decided not to sit down at the Sectorial Table until the Basque Government initiates a real negotiation.

The unions have announced that they are not going to attend, considering that it is an act of “propaganda and blackmail” against the workforce, since Osakidetza wants to put on the table an extraordinary call for the professional career with a disbursement of 300 million euros, an issue that has already been agreed but has not been fulfilled.

Even the Euskadi Medical Union (SME), which is not participating in the strike, has decided not to appear at the Sectoral Table, assuring that Osakidetza’s willingness to negotiate is “null”.

The unions denounce “the malaise and the weariness” of both the workforce and the citizens themselves and criticize that the Department of Health has not taken “a single step” nor has it proposed “a single measure” to reverse the “dismantling and the precariousness” that “ravage” the public health system.

They reproach the “absolute lack of planning for the generational changeover of a workforce” and warn that the precariousness and workload are causing Osakidetza professionals in Primary Care to leave their positions towards specialized care, private health or abroad.

The plants calculate that an OPE with “5,000 new places, of which 1,000 should be for Primary Care“, in order to ensure that workloads are manageable, working conditions are decent and health care is of quality.

In the opinion of the unions, the pandemic “has become the perfect excuse to continue with its policies of cuts, dismantling, lack of investment and privatization.”

Both the Lehendakari, Iñigo Urkullu, and the Minister of Health, Gotzone Sagardui, have acknowledged that there are difficulties, but they assure that the public system has given a “high-level” response during the pandemic and that it is not the time for a strike.

The Basque Government insists that health spending is the highest of all the autonomous communitieswith 1,984 euros per person per year, ensures that two thirds of the budget is allocated to personnel and that the accounts have gone from 3,800 million euros in 2019 to 4,300 this year.

Both the strike in Primary Care and the general strike on Monday have been joined by EH Bildu and Elkarrekin Podemos-IU. On Saturday the unions will hold demonstrations in the three capitals of the CAV.

Minimum services of a Saturday

The strike will not affect screening, extractions and vaccination, where the Basque Government has set a minimum service of 100%, as well as in the Continuous Care Points (PAC) and in cleaning, while in health centers it must 50% of the staff who usually do so on a Saturday work and telephone service.