Doctors and medical professionals in Euskadi, on strike to achieve a specific framework statute, have demanded from the Spanish and Basque governments a "serious and real negotiation and not imposition and propaganda" and that the Lehendakari's request to Minister Mónica García to withdraw the Framework Statute "be true" and that "she feels pressured by the autonomous communities to reverse her proposal," although they admit they consider it "very complicated."
These demands were presented by the spokesperson for the Association of Doctors United for their Rights (MUD), Javier Fernández, and by the general secretary of the Medical Union of Euskadi (SME), Mabel Artziniega, moments before several hundred professionals gathered in the Plaza del Sagrado Corazón, from where they began a demonstration through the streets of Bilbao.
In the fifth week of the strike, the medical professionals staged a scene in the Biscayan capital full of injured people lying on the ground, attended by a doctor, while other professionals surrounded them with banners displaying the main slogans and demands of the collective.
During his speech, Fernández emphasized that Basque doctors do not need "speeches, photographs, or headlines, but negotiation, respect, dignified breaks, more professionals, and concrete measures to guarantee the future of Osakidetza because, without doctors, there is no public healthcare, and its defense begins by not ignoring their demands and by defending those who make public healthcare possible every day."
After recalling that they have been demanding a "real, serious, and honest" negotiation for months, he criticized that, both from the Ministry of Health and from Osakidetza, they have only perceived "a strategy based on exemption from responsibilities, empty headlines, and vague promises, while the fundamental demands of doctors continue without a response."
According to his denunciation, while the minister "continues with her proposed framework statute, disregarding doctors and transferring all responsibility to the communities," the Basque Minister of Health, Alberto Martínez, announces in the media an economic offer of "70 million euros" which, in his opinion, "does not respond to our main demands," including ensuring adequate breaks, reducing healthcare overload, and reinforcing staff.
In his opinion, with this action "dynamiting the negotiation with those who sustain the healthcare system on the front lines, the doctors", when "doctors do not ask for privileges but dignified conditions to treat patients with dignity, to work with time, safety and humanity".
Fernández has warned that "when doctors leave, burn out or abandon the system due to exhaustion, public healthcare loses its main asset, the doctors" and has added that, although "it pains us to say it", "Osakidetza is mortally wounded and we are reaching a critical point because every failed negotiation, every insufficient staff, every excessive on-call duty and every broken rest deepens a crisis that threatens present and future healthcare quality".
He insisted that "we have time to reverse the situation but for that, we need actions, not words; negotiation and respect, not imposition and propaganda".
In this context, he recalled that the indefinite strike announced for September "is not the property of any acronym but a direct consequence of the tiredness, frustration and lack of responses experienced by thousands of professionals" and has claimed that "whoever wants to support this mobilization will be welcome, but no one should try to appropriate a struggle that belongs to the doctors who have been denouncing their unfair and, at times, dire working conditions for years".
Criticism of the Minister of Health
The spokesperson for the MUD has considered "especially striking" that the minister Alberto Martínez "intends to present himself now as a reference for the defense of healthcare interests in the Interterritorial Council, leading debates and claims before the Ministry, when in Euskadi, we are still waiting for real solutions to our most urgent problems".
After questioning how he can "aspire to lead a state-wide demand when he has not been able to resolve the conflict they have with their doctors here in Osakidetza", he urged him not to present himself as a defender of professionals before the Ministry when "here, in Euskadi, doctors are still waiting for real negotiation and concrete progress in our conditions".
Request for Pradales' withdrawal
On the other hand, the general secretary of the SME, Mabel Artziniega, has lamented that the conversations with the Ministry to achieve the withdrawal of the ministerial proposal are "at a point of total blockage" and that they feel "disappointed" by the total absence of response from the minister after announcing her indefinite strike for September.
In this regard, she has stated that "they would love it to be true" the request of the lehendakari Imanol Pradales to the minister to withdraw the framework statute, although she has specified that "if only it were so, but dreaming is free since at the point we are, we see it as very complicated."
She considers it essential that the autonomous communities "really pressure the minister to back down from her proposal" because, in her opinion, "we cannot start the house from the roof, but from the foundations, with a framework statute that reflects our real conditions and takes doctors into account."
After reproaching that both the Ministry and Osakidetza "pass the buck to each other" when each party has a responsibility that cannot be evaded, she recalled that, in the scope of Euskadi, "many of the labor conditions are the responsibility of Osakidetza," such as "the format of on-call duties or their price."
Artziniega also alluded to the official data on strike follow-up disseminated by the Basque Department of Health to emphasize that "it is not normal for there to be talk of 15% follow-up and a public health system like Osakidetza to stop," or that "if professionals voluntarily decide to stop working overtime, the system stops and waiting lists go to infinity."
After insisting that the system "requires a profound restructuring," she has demanded that "negotiations begin and the medical collective be taken into account" and has added that "it makes no sense for class unions to negotiate the conditions of doctors" and that, therefore, as professionals "they ask to be at that table and have sufficient representation to negotiate our own conditions."