Despite the stresses and strains of working at Torrevieja Hospital since the revision to public management over a year ago, the straw has finally broke the camel’s back, and workers at the facility have voted by a huge majority to go on strike.
The latest development which has prompted the action was the regional Ministry of Health deciding to question, and then intend to change, a collective agreement made by the workers with former management company Ribera Salud. And so, on Thursday evening, a meeting was called by the unions representing the professionals, and the result of the vote is that a strike has been supported by 96% of all voters and 50.16% of the total census.
The meeting also followed a mass protest at the doors of the hospital on Thursday morning, where the staff showed their disgust at this latest abuse of their trust whilst trying to maintain a disastrous service, and, in particular, that the Ministry withdraw the complaint against the collective agreement.
The end result of the protests, meetings, and vote, is that a strike has been called during the middle of the Easter Holidays, to demand that the Consell rectify their position and honour the workers.
The collective Works Council representing the staff said that “the Ministry leaves our future work in the hands of what a judge decides on September 18, nothing matters about the uncertainty that this creates in 911 professionals of the health authority. If the judge agrees with them, we do not know what working conditions we will have from September, but surely the Ministry does not believe that they are better than the current ones”, said the spokesperson, Ana Linares.
The manifesto states that “if they consider our current agreement harmful… what can we expect from the negotiations for the next one? More than a year ago we formed the negotiating table. Since then we have met 3 times, always due to repeated requests on our part and convened alone, to paralyse worker mobilisations, but this time, they are not going to stop us, they have lost our confidence and the only thing that can make us give up is the withdrawal of this judicial complaint and the real involvement in the negotiation of a new agreement with the improvements that professionals deserve, which we have earned hard for years by giving the best quality of care to the department”
The strike action coincides with Easter, a period that the hospital staff were not looking forward too, as they fully expect the system to collapse once again, due to the increase in the number of people visiting the area, as has been the case in all holiday periods since the revision.
“It is where it is going to hurt the most and where we are going to be heard the most,” explains Fran García, from the Works Council. The representatives of the workers indicate that they will take the protests to Valencia, if necessary.
