The approximately participants in the 14th Congress of the National Federation of Doctors (Fnam) unanimously approved this Sunday a motion to join the general strike of December 11th, called against the Government’s labor package.
The president of the federation told Lusa that in the motion approved, in Viana do Castelo, on the last day of the congress’ work, the appeal was defined “for the participation of all doctors, stating that the defense of labor rights is inseparable from the defense of the medical profession and the National Health Service (SNS)”.
“The National Federation of Doctors is reaffirming its objectives, which are the fight for fair wages, decent working conditions, reintegration of intern doctors into their careers and the uncompromising defense of an SNS that is public, universal, accessible and close to the population”, stated Joana Bordalo e Sá.
The person in charge said it was “unacceptable for Minister Ana Paula Martins to replace the concept of SNS with a system that emptied the National Health Service, diluting the public sector and taking the State away from responsibility”.
“We reject this view and reaffirm that the NHS is a National Health Service and is a constitutional commitment to citizens,” he added.
Joana Bordalo e Sá said that the Government’s labor package “represents serious risks for doctors and the NHS, as it presupposes that there are more precarious relationships, a deregulation of work in the form of flexible working hours, but what we are seeing is a deregulation of work and this will make it more difficult to reconcile professional life with personal and family life and, above all, an erosion of labor protection”.
“This labor package will also weaken doctors, it will create more precarious relationships, deregulate schedules, increase the strain on those who are already at their limit. This flexibility that they are talking about is not true flexibility. It is unpredictability, it is tiredness (…). When those who work in the NHS are weakened, the NHS itself is weakened. This is a real risk for the care of the population. Faced with this situation, we could not remain silent and the National Federation of Doctors joins the general strike”, he explained.
For Joana Bordalo e Sá, the “few” changes to labor legislation that were presented to Fnam reflect “something very poorly designed, confusing and not in line with what is necessary, which is to integrate doctors providing services into the SNS staff”.
“These doctors did not leave the SNS by choice, they were pushed out of the SNS. If we want them to work within the SNS, we have to guarantee for these doctors and for all doctors salaries that are fair and decent working conditions for them to return to the SNS, for the staff with a stable and not precarious employment”, he stressed.
The president of Fnam highlighted that “medical providers provide hours and hours of work in emergency services from the north to the south of the country, and considered that their “transition” to the SNS “cannot in any way be an abrupt transition due to the risk of emergency services closing”.
“What we defend is that service providers must be integrated into the NHS so that, in fact, all services can be open, emergency services, particularly obstetrics gynecology”, he explained.
Given “the lack of measures planned for SNS doctors”, Joana Bordalo e Sá “perspectives that the chaos could be even greater this winter, with hours of waiting in emergency services, perhaps closed emergency services and not just in obstetrics, gynecology, pediatrics, orthopedics”.
Fnam challenges “the Government of Luís Montenegro to sit at the table, in a serious, transparent way and negotiate measures so that there are more doctors in the SNS”.
“If Luís Montenegro does not have this political will, he will lead the SNS to its collapse and, at the same time, in the face of disinvestment in the SNS, we are seeing the private sector investing more and more (…) because they know that Luís Montenegro will give them a return”.
The person responsible highlighted that “Luís Montenegro has completely ignored doctors and all NHS professionals and, therefore, he is also responsible for this entire situation, and is responsible for every pregnant woman who travels kilometers and kilometers, for every pregnant woman who has her baby in an ambulance, on the side of the road or on the hard ground of a street”.