The CGT, Force Ouvrière, SUD and Unsa have filed joint notices to alert to the “catastrophic situation” in hospitals. The unions fear difficulties as the holidays approach.
The conflict over pensions is over, that over the hospital is starting again. Four of the five main hospital unions are calling for a “national day of action” Tuesday, June 20. And unlike their last mobilizations in dispersed rows eight months ago, thehe health federations of the CGT, Force Ouvrière, SUD and Unsa have this time decided to file joint strike notices. The demands have not changed: increase in wages and pensions, improvement of working conditions, recognition of hardships, end of bed closures and restructuring...
In the short term first. Health services fear that the difficulties at the hospital will repeat themselves in July and August. “We are very, very worried on the eve of summer, when the population is increasing in Gironde, and with the approach of major events such as the Rugby World Cup and the Olympic Games., explains Gilbert Mouden, nurse-anesthetist in Bordeaux, interviewed by the Actu.fr site. For this carer, also a staff representative at the CHU, “the situation is more worrying than last year”.
“We have plenty of personnel officers who have made the decision to leave their jobs this year. And even if management has blocked departures between April 2023 and the end of September, recruitment will not follow for next year.
Gilbert Mouden, nurse-anesthesiologistat Actu.fr
600 km away, Professor Frédéric Adnet, head of emergencies at the Avicenne hospital (Bobigny), also fears the worst. Hospital staff “will necessarily go on vacation” during this period, he explains to TF1. Due to the vocations crisis in the sector, it will be difficult to replace them. According to him, “there will therefore be new closures linked to departures on vacation. Their number will be significant, more important than the reference year, in 2019, before the Covid-19″.
Loss of meaning and crisis of vocations
Difficult in this case to complete the schedules without closing beds, confirmed last May with franceinfo Jérôme Goeminne, director of the Cœur Grand Est group. Ditto at the GHT du Grand Cognac, where his colleague Julien Bilhaut estimates that he will have to do without 40 beds to guarantee patient safety. “I don’t want to DIYhe justifies. I prefer to reduce the sails and set a course, to secure and reassure the staff, because the period is terribly anxiety-provoking.”
In its joint press release, the intersyndicale speaks of employees who “can’t take it anymore”. “The loss of meaning is such that professionals flee, resign”she wrote. She also asserts that “80% of the national territory is a medical desert” and evokes “a state scandal”. In the strike notice it filed, the Force Ouvrière union again denounces “the catastrophic situation of hospitals”.
“The medical and paramedical shortage is an assumed political choice, which accompanies the budgetary austerity maintained for years in a desire to dry up the public system to better undermine it.”
The inter-union made up of the CGT, SUD, FO and Unsain a joint statement
The four unions, which recently boycotted a meeting at the Ministry of Health on the subject of violence against caregivers (after the murder of a nurse in Reims), also intend to protest against the “denial of social dialogue” of the executive, explains Yann Le Baron, secretary general of the health branch of Unsa, interviewed by AFP.
Another strike scheduled for July 4
The tension in the hospital is likely to rise further on July 4. Three unions of hospital practitioners have already called for “a day of strike and action”. “The public hospital is collapsing in whole sections”write the Hospital Medical Coordination (CMH), the National Union of Hospital Practitioners (INPH) and the National Union of Physicians, Surgeons, Specialists, Biologists and Pharmacists in Public Hospitals (SNAM-HP). According to them, the situation “has never been so serious” for this profession “became a real foil” so much for young doctorss “who no longer want to commit” in the hospital only for those “of all ages quitting more and more”.
The three unions, which represent more than 40% of practitioners, and even 70% of university hospitals, are also putting pressure on the Ministry of Health by demanding “the immediate resumption of negotiations” suspended for a month. In particular, they ask “a general increase in all salaries to take account of inflation” as well as a “immediate upgrade” night and weekend call and on-call duty, the main causes of “the arduousness of hospital medical practice”.