The Health Workers Union, Simebal says there’s a lot of anger and disappointment in the Medical Community in the Balearic Islands over the lack of recognition for the hard work they’ve done during the coronavirus pandemic, especially during the first weeks when hardly any PPE materials were available.
"The perfect storm is forming,” said Simebal President, Miguel Lazaro ”if the pandemic does not resurface and if the Health Department doesn’t propose dialogue and solutions after years of economic hardship, there could be problems in the Autumn.
The Health Department says it has not ruled out negotiations and claimed some of the demands have already been met, in particular, the recovery of rights lost during the 2008 economic crisis, such as social assistance; professional career recognition; higher cost of Medical Staff on-call time and the stabilisation of staff with opposition proceedings or the payment of guards to pregnant doctors which was made after several lawsuits.
“There is a lot of indignation and anger, firstly, because of the helplessness we felt after the first four weeks without adequate means of protection,” said Lazaro, “secondly, because politicians said we were responsible for the high level of contagion and thirdly, because the recognition is rhetorical but not accompanied by retributive or labour measures.
The Medical Unions insists that Doctors still have "a burden of care" due to professional deficits in some specialties and point out that "there is still a high percentage of temporary work that could be resolved by making doctors who have already passed selective tests permanent, but IB-Salut refuses,” they said.
The unrest extends to doctors in the rest of the country and the State Confederation of Medical Unions, or CESM convened a rally a few days ago for the election of Resident Internal Medicine, or MIR jobs that ended up being resolved.
There are already rumours of a general strike.