The doctors' strike has not only opened a dispute over the Framework Statute or the collective's working conditions. It has also reactivated another classic front in this type of conflict: the controversy over minimum services. The organizing bodies, led by the State Confederation of Medical Unions (CESM), have been denouncing that those set for the stoppages are “abusive” and distort the right to strike.
Union criticism is based on the fact that, in many communities, the minimums have guaranteed urgent activity and reinforced coverage in areas considered essential. A pattern is repeated in the different regional criteria reviewed: emergencies at 100%, protection of ICUs and critical areas, guaranteed care for admitted patients, and maintenance of activity considered essential.
The union complaint
For the organizers, that scheme limits the real scope of the strike and also affects the reading of its follow-up. They maintain in their statements that part of the official figures do not reflect the real support for the stoppage because many professionals designated for minimum services cannot support it.
That complaint is not new, and in this call it has once again occupied a central place. The strike committee has even linked this issue to the underlying conflict, considering that very broad minimums render a trade union pressure tool ineffective.
The Administrations justify these criteria in the need to guarantee care continuity and protect essential services. It is precisely that balance between the right to strike and healthcare that is at the center of the dispute.
Beyond the concrete follow-up of each day, the controversy over minimum services has thus become another symbol of the open clash between medical unions and administrations, and one of the arguments with which the organizers explain that the conflict is far from over.
What doctors ask for
The strike called by CESM and the rest of the committee organizations is based on a battery of demands linked to the new Framework Statute and the working conditions of the group. One of the main demands is the creation of a specific Framework Statute for doctors and physicians, a claim that the unions consider key to specifically address the singularities of the profession.
Among the demands is also the regulation of working hours and on-call duties, one of the most frequently raised points by the organizers, who denounce excessive workloads. To this, they add changes in retirement matters, improvements in professional classification, and a review of pay and professional recognition conditions.
The organizers insist that the doctors' strike is not only about salary demands, but about a demand for structural changes for the professional practice and for the functioning of the healthcare system. Within that framework, they maintain that the conflict remains open as long as there are no real advances in negotiations.