“We need a big Marshall plan” for the public hospital, launched Thursday March 31 on franceinfo Didier Birig, secretary general of the Health branch of Force Ouvrière and negotiator at the Ségur de la santé, while the Senate calls in a report to “an electroshock” in hospital management. According to the senators, caregivers must receive a “fair financial recognition”get out of “The Moral of Volunteering” and be better represented in hospital governance.
“Since 2002, we have commodified care and we must always do better with less”denounces Didier Birig who says he is “angry” against the senators who “reinvent the powder”. Force Ouvrière demands, “between nursing homes and the public hospital, 200,000 jobs” with a “multi-year plan”.
franceinfo: Do you agree with the Senate report?
Didier Birig: The report of the senators is neither more nor less than the photo of what we reported to the senators during the various hearings. We need a big Marshall plan. The hospital has been in decline since 2002 and the introduction of 35 hours. At the time, we needed 70,000 positions but we only received 8,000. Since 2002, we have been undergoing hospital reforms one after the other, with the aim of assimilating the hospital to a business . We commodify care and we must always do better with less. Today, the Covid crisis highlights the state of decay of the hospital. Quite honestly, I am angry with the politicians. At Force Ouvrière, we have been alerting the various governments for more than ten years to the situation and the sequence of these health laws that have put the hospital in great difficulty. We see that today we are reinventing powder. We didn’t need four months of commission to know what to do. We have known for months and years what to do.
What electroshock do you need?
You actually need one. The Ségur brought resources and allowed a catch-up but one cannot ask a government to catch up with what has not been done for twenty years. It has been twenty years since there have been any upgrades at the hospital level to what it deserves. Today, we have partially restored purchasing power to certain hospital workers who have received 183 euros, but some have not had new grids: administrative and technical staff, workers… The hospital is a complex entity where, without everyone, it cannot work. Le Ségur also said something else: that the hospital should walk on two legs. On the one hand, it was the human resources aspect, with salaries, and on the other hand, it was the means. We need staff. At Force Ouvrière, we say clearly that, between nursing homes and the public hospital, we need 200,000 nurses and caregivers. We know that there is no magic cabinet in the Ministry of Health in which we could find these professionals. It is not possible. We therefore need a multi-year plan, over five or six years, with immediate discussions, so that we can open nursing training institutes.
Do you need a Ségur de la santé “bis”?
No, there is no need. Nursing schools and training institutes for caregivers must be reopened. We also really have to do away with the national numerus clausus for doctors because today, with a lot of publicity, we were told that there are no more except that we have put in place a numerus clausus at the level of each faculty. The national numerus clausus therefore still exists. We have to sit around the table because these are the measures that will restore the attractiveness of the care professions and caregivers to be able to stay in hospital. It is above all this that will allow the agents to find decent working conditions.