But not only. “From a remuneration point of view, any travel allowance involves compensating a doctor who will have the increased risk of working in a hospital other than his usual place of work. Not only with travel that entails expenses, but also risks in the activity. And it seems to us, obviously, that the proposed incentive is not at all attractive”, For example: “We are talking about 500 euros per month gross, which has not yet been subject to taxes, and we are taxed at 45%. Therefore, if a doctor performs two 12-hour emergencies every week, in a regional emergency, he completes 96 hours at the end of a month. Which means that, in practice, it’s as if you were paid five euros more per hour. Now does this compensate for the wear and tear of clinical risk and traveling to another hospital?”asks Nuno Rodrigues, arguing that, “perhaps, the incentives to have more doctors in emergency rooms should not be like this, but with incentives in basic salaries or more vacation days”.
For Fnam, the union that announced this Thursday, it will go ahead with a national strike on October 24th, the day on which there is also a general strike in the Public Service, decreed by the Common Front, “a subsidy of another 500 euros per month will not solve the basic problem which is the lack of doctors in the NHS and the hiring of more professionals”. “This is what we continue to defend and want to negotiate”, he stressed.
Joana Bordalo e Sá reinforces to DN that “the written document was not made available to them and, therefore, we do not know exactly what it contains”, but, from the outset, what the Government wants is for “doctors to work two or three days of work in emergency services, whether 12 or 24 hours a week, and this is not compatible with a balanced personal life”.
Therefore, “it is not because of the supplement that doctors will agree to do more emergencies”, remembering that “doctors unionized at Fnam, as well as those with public service contracts, are protected by the collective work agreement”. And, as he explains, “a government’s decree-law does not call into question what is defined in a collective work agreement”.
According to what Minister Ana Paula Martins had announced, the creation of regional emergencies is a project for the entire country, however, progress must be made on the South Bank of the Tagus to try to stop the simultaneous closure of the Gynecology-Obstetrics services of the three existing hospitals in the region, as has been happening.
At the end of the meetings, the unions expressed “doubts” regarding the effectiveness of the measures. According to SIM, the project that “we would have less problems approving immediately would be the creation of the Centers and High Performance, because we are not against this type of service management”, but both in relation to the project for the workers and the regional emergencies “we have serious doubts”.
The Fnam, for its part, rejects the way in which “everything was presented”, “it is not a serious negotiation”, said Joana Bordalo e Sá and went ahead with a strike for the 24th, a protest that the SIM general secretary says he “does not follow”, because “there are meetings taking place and because SIM, in principle, does not go on strikes on Fridays”.