The prolonged strike raises the debate on essential services. While emergency services, considered essential, continue to welcome patients, schools whose teachers are affiliated with the FAE remain closed.
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Health
However, we should not believe that all health services are spared from pressure tactics. Not everything is considered essential in the eyes of the law. Although the most urgent surgeries (such as trauma and appendicitis attacks) are maintained, scheduled operations, often planned for several months, are considered non-essential. This means that if you were able to wait 8 months before having your hip replaced, you should be able to wait a few more weeks due to the strike.
But what is the human and health cost of these days of strike? Is it ethical, or even humane, to let people suffer in the name of the union cause?
Is it ethical to slow down services like oncology, pediatrics, radiology and laboratory, regardless of the cause?
Patients find themselves doubly held hostage: taken hostage by a failing system which is failing on all sides, and taken hostage by a union ideology which places profit at all costs above all else.
Education
We also need to think about the education sector. Is it ethical to leave troubled children, potentially future dropouts, at home for weeks? Are we sacrificing children, whether they are disadvantaged or in difficulty, in the name of a union cause, however legitimate it may be?
This negotiation will ultimately cost us more than the tens of billions on the table. It will cost us the quality of life of certain patients and the future of certain children.