Union cites health ministry’s refusal to start negotiations on salaries
FNAM, the national federation of doctors, has announced a ‘general strike’ on Tuesday, July 23 and Wednesday, July 24 – blaming the health ministry on refusing to enter into negotiations on pay increases.
“The health ministry refused to sign a negotiation agreement and ended up forcing doctors to take other measures, like a strike”, FNAM’s president Joana Bordalo e Sá told Lusa, following a meeting with the health ministry yesterday.
She said the two day national strike will be accompanied by a new ‘strike over extraordinary overtime’ (overtime beyond the legal 150 hours of overtime that is stipulated in every public sector doctor’s work contract).
“The decision is taken and the strike warning notice will be drawn up”, said Bordalo e Sá, stressing that negotiations on doctors pay increases need to be concluded by October in order to be written into the 2025 State Budget.
Reacting to FNAM’s announcement, health minister Ana Paula Martins told journalists today at a function at the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon “there is always room to negotiate with the professions” and the government has “the door completely open”.
Indeed, Ana Paula Martins seemed to think yesterday’s meeting with FNAM had gone “very well”…
This is not the first time ‘incongruence’ has slipped into the frame with Ana Paula Martins. The minister is currently locked in a controversy over what really went on between her ministry and INEM over medical emergency helicopter cover (the ministry has one story, INEM’s former president quite another. Indeed he has resigned over the situation – and given his version of what has been going on to Expresso). Today, she answered questions on “the situation in INEM” with “I am not going to talk about those issues,” opting instead, writes Lusa, to emphasise her “recognition of dentists”, who “have been doing very important work for decades and decades without there actually being a consistent oral health plan”.
What this latest head-to-head between the government and doctors has done, however, is to separate the two main unions, FNAM and SIM (the independent syndicate of doctors). During the years of the last government, FNAM and SIM stood ‘side by side’, both in negotiations and industrial action aimed at winning concessions for their members. This time round, SIM has already reached agreement with the government on the negotiating protocol, writes Lusa, “defining the timetable and issues to be negotiated, which include salary scales, a prerequisite for moving forward with negotiations”.
In other words, the national strike later this month will only be waged by doctors affiliated with FNAM.
