Medical Professionals Union (SMU) announced this Monday, November 2, a national and regional medical strike between November 16 and 27, with the aim of demanding a Statute for Doctors that regulates the labor conditions of practitioners throughout Spain. The organization is asking the Government for extraordinary funding that will make it possible to address salary and professional improvements, while it is demanding urgent measures from the autonomous communities to relieve the care burden. The mobilization will take place in the midst of the campaign for the general elections of November 29, although the union warns that the electoral call cannot serve as an argument to postpone the negotiations.
In a statement sent this Monday, SMU links its demands to the deterioration that, in its view, public services have been suffering, and refers to the railway tragedy in Urda (Toledo) to call for greater attention to infrastructure and essential services. The organization considers that the problems of healthcare are structural in nature and affect the National Health System as a whole, so it rejects the idea that their solution should depend exclusively on each autonomous community. In this regard, it defends the need to establish common professional conditions that guarantee a framework of rights for all doctors, regardless of the territory where they practice.
The call is structured around three main demands: a separate Statute for Doctors, extraordinary funding, and immediate measures from the regional administrations. SMU intends to coordinate state-level mobilizations with the already planned territorial strikes, without replacing the latter. The Association MIR España has endorsed the call and will participate in the strike committees, according to the union.
A Statute for Doctors to regulate salaries, on-call duties, and working conditions
The main demand of SMU is the approval of a specific Statute of the Doctor that recognizes the particularities of the profession and establishes common labor conditions throughout Spain. The union considers that the current Framework Statute, which regulates the conditions of statutory workers in health services, does not offer a sufficient response to the needs of physicians because it integrates their regulation into a shared framework with other professional categories. For this reason, it demands its own space for negotiation with the administrations and legislation that expressly contemplates the characteristics of medical practice.
Among the issues that the future regulation should address are salaries, the length of the workday, rest periods, on-call duties, continuing training, professional career, and retirement. The organization maintains that these matters require specific regulation to avoid excessive differences between autonomous communities and to guarantee common minimum conditions. It also insists on the need to review the system of continuity of care, especially prolonged workdays and the mechanisms with which the needs for care outside ordinary hours are covered.
The union recalls that a specific regulation for the medical profession has been demanded for more than six years, a period during which, it denounces, numerous meetings have been held with parties and governments without reaching a sufficient commitment to promote the rule. With the new call, it aims to increase pressure on the administrations and get the negotiation of the Statute of the Doctor to become a political priority.
They demand extraordinary funding to improve salaries and strengthen staff levels
SMU’s second major demand is that any labor reform be accompanied by sufficient economic resources to apply it. The organization demands from the Government extraordinary and earmarked funding, that is, specifically intended to cover the agreed improvements and prevent its implementation from depending solely on the ordinary budgets of each regional health service. It also demands an economic report that makes it possible to calculate the real cost of the changes and establish guarantees for their compliance.
Among the priorities that should be funded, the union highlights the strengthening of staff numbers, the transformation of the on-call system, adequate remuneration for all hours worked and the recovery of lost purchasing power. In its view, legislative changes will not solve the group’s problems if they do not include budgetary provision that makes it possible to hire professionals, reorganize schedules and improve pay.
SMU warns that any reform that lacks sufficient funding runs the risk of remaining "a mere declaration of intent". The organization maintains that the shortage of resources and work overload make it difficult to cover care needs and can affect the care patients receive.
35-hour workweek and negotiation tables in the autonomous communities
The call also directs its demands to the autonomous communities, responsible for managing health services. SMU calls on regional governments to adopt urgent measures without waiting for the approval of the future Statute of the Doctor, including the creation of specific negotiation tables for physicians and the implementation of the 35-hour weekly workweek in those territories where it has not yet been reached.
The union also asks for sufficient staff to meet healthcare demand without systematically resorting to the overexertion of professionals. It considers that these actions can be developed in parallel with state-level negotiations and would help reduce labor difficulties while a common regulation is being processed. The call seeks, precisely, to combine the general demands of the profession with the particular problems of each regional health service.
The national strike does not aim to replace territorial mobilizations, but to coordinate them in order to strengthen doctors’ negotiating capacity, SMU explains. This strategy will allow each community to maintain its specific demands while the group as a whole calls for a solution at the state level.
The medical strike will be held before the general elections of 29N
The call from November 16 to 27 will take place during the two weeks prior to the general elections of November 29, a context that SMU considers should not paralyze the search for solutions. The organization acknowledges that it will be up to the next Executive to address certain reforms, but maintains that the Ministries of Health and Labor remain valid interlocutors within the powers they retain during the electoral period and the situation of a government in office.
Likewise, it recalls that the autonomous communities retain full powers to negotiate and adopt measures in health matters, so it considers it unjustified to postpone all actions until after the elections. The union also argues that the electoral campaign can serve for the different parties to express public commitments on the approval of a Statute of the Physician and the financing necessary to improve professional conditions.
The decision to call a strike comes after an internal consultation carried out by SMU reflected majority support for mobilizing before the elections. According to the results published by the organization on October 15, the 67.3% of the 789 members who participated was in favor of calling stoppages before 29N, compared with 28.9% who preferred to wait for the formation of the new Government. This is a consultation among participants in the union, so its results cannot be extrapolated to the group of Spanish doctors as a whole.
Doctors seek concrete commitments to prevent the conflict from being prolonged
The Sindicato Médicos Unidos insists that the objective of the strike is to open effective negotiation and achieve concrete commitments, not to indefinitely prolong the conflict with the administrations. The organization considers that a comprehensive reform of professional conditions would improve the situation of doctors and would help strengthen the care capacity of the health system.
For this reason, it urges the central Government and the autonomous communities to assume their respective responsibilities and establish channels of dialogue to address both urgent measures and structural reforms. The organization links the improvement of doctors’ working conditions with the quality of care received by patients, considering that the current difficulties in having enough professionals affect the functioning of healthcare centers.
The strike is called for the period between Monday, November 16, and Friday, November 27, although the statement still does not detail the specific times of the stoppages, the minimum services, or the extent of participation it will have in each autonomous community. Its effective impact on consultations, hospitals, and health centers will depend on the adherence of professionals and on the organizational measures established by the competent administrations.
With this mobilization, SMU aims to place the Medical Statute and health funding among the central issues of public debate before 29N, while demanding immediate responses for a profession that, according to its complaint, has been waiting for years for a reform of its working conditions.