More than 50% of hospital doctors in France declared themselves to be on strike on Monday, according to several unions at the origin of this social movement, which asked to be received by President Emmanuel Macron to obtain salary increases.
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“We are between 50 and 100% participation in the strike,” said during a press conference the emergency doctor Jean-François Cibien, president of the inter-union Action Practitioners Hospital (APH) who called for this day of stock. For example, he put forward a rate of 80% of strikers in La Rochelle, and 65% in Annecy.
As usual, the strike did not interrupt the activity of hospitals, doctors being assigned as needed to ensure continuity of care. But for the anesthesiologist Anne Wernet, “in unionist memory, we have never seen so many people who mobilize and not only in the specialties posted” like his.
Symptom of the “degraded situation” of a “hospital in the process of being emptied of the supply of care”, underlined the psychiatrist Emmanuel Loeb, recalling the 30% of unfilled positions, occupied largely by temporary workers, interns or foreign doctors.
The fault with “a loss of purchasing power of more than 20% in twenty years”, in “a context of medical demography at half mast”, explained resuscitator Yves Rebuffat, lamenting: “the fewer we are, the less we are pay to stay in the hospital.
The demands focus in particular on night guards, which the Minister of Health François Braun nevertheless increased by 50% upon his arrival in July 2022 – the compensation now exceeds 400 euros gross for 12 hours of service.
But the measure is only extended until the end of August and negotiations are at a standstill, pending government arbitration. “We worked, we built things” then “we are told that there is no more envelope” to finance it, regretted Mr. Cibien.
“We want 500 to 600 euros” for these guards and that they be “taken into account for retirement”, he summarized, asking “to be received by the President of the Republic” to win his case.