The nurses of the Centro Hospitalar do Médio Tejo (CHMT) go on strike on Tuesday, in the morning and afternoon shifts, to demand the release of the evaluation for career progression and to challenge the worsening of working conditions.
This Tuesday’s strike in the morning and afternoon shifts”, which will take place between 08:00 and 24:00, “is to demand that they correct [aos enfermeiros] the time that was not taken into account for career progression, that they comply with work schedules to allow rest and breaks, and reiterate that we are totally against the decrease in the number of nurses,” the nurse told Lusa Helena. Jorge, from the Portuguese Union of Nurses (SEP).
The union leader, who announced a press conference for Tuesday at the entrance of the Torres Novas Hospital, in the district of Santarém, one of the three hospitals that make up the Centro Hospitalar do Médio Tejo (CHMT), together with the de Abrantes and Tomar, highlighted that “the central issue has to do with the problem of professional progression”, a process that dates back to 2018 and will affect 80% of the approximately 700 nurses in that hospital.
“The CHMT, since the thawing of the public administration, is one of the hospitals in the country that counted the fewest years not evaluated […]. It did not evaluate the nurses between 2004 and 2014, in different periods,” said Helena Jorge, noting that “for about 20 years these nurses have continued to receive their basic career salary, maintaining a “discrimination between the links to the individual work contract (CIT) and the civil service, with fewer vacations, without ADSE and many differences”, in a “problem that has been dragging on since 2018”.
After pointing out that the strike “is a decision of last resort” and that it was “considered by colleagues,” Helena Jorge reiterated that the protest occurs “mainly because, with the previous administration, nurses were heavily sanctioned for not being evaluated in the CHMT and in the thaw [de carreiras] in 2018”.
But “there are other problems, such as the increase in overtimenon-compliance with the time rules, and non-assignment of a vacation day to nurses with Individual Work Contract (CIT) “, he added.
Contacted by Lusa, the Board of Directors of the Centro Hospitalar do Médio Tejo, EPE, said that it “promotes and implements a culture of dialogue and constructive negotiation with the union structures that represent its health professionals”, having ensured a “permanent availability to respond to labor claims, within the limits of the autonomy of the Institution, and always with strict adherence to the current legislative framework.
The Board of Directors of the CHMT also informed Lusa that it will meet with the SEP at the beginning of the second half of September, to “formally receive, and in a spirit of constructive negotiation, the demands of the nurses”.
Helena Jorge told Lusa that the meeting is scheduled for September 16, and assured that “if there is no progress by the CHMT on the demands” of the nurses, the SEP will do so “immediately with a new notice of strike” .
Source: Observadora
