Health minister confident of resolution of dispute with nurses before strike

This Monday, the Minister of Health expressed confidence that the dispute with nurses over the retraining of professions would be resolved in time to avoid a strike scheduled for February 7th.

“I expect everything to go on time to avoid a strike because I think nurses have every right to demand retraining because it is unfair that a nurse who has worked for 15 or 20 years gets the same salary as a nurse who starts working. your activity today [segunda-feira]”said Manuel Pizarro in Monchique, in the Algarve.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the “Saúde Aberta” initiative, which will cover all municipalities in the Algarve, the minister assured that he was paying individual attention to each of the cases and that everything would be decided according to the principles that had been agreed. .

“I hope that the rights of most disgruntled nurses will be recognized, but I cannot guarantee that this will happen to everyone, because there are very different situations,” Pizarro said.

The official ensured that the government “will deal with all cases individually, which does not mean that everyone is right, but everyone will be considered to be right as to who is right.”

Reaffirming that “every case is a case,” the government official warned of the need for interpretation “so as not to create injustice, without situations that review authorities may consider in the future.” [os enfermeiros] misclassified and revoke granted rights.”

“Obviously, there can be kickbacks. In the hospitals themselves there is a decision making system based on the interpretation of the law, but apparently in a state of law, anyone who feels they have been treated unfairly always has the right to complain differently, and we will deal with cases individually, which does not mean that we’re going to agree with everyone,” he admitted.

Manuel Pizarro said he thought nurses “recognize the massive budgetary effort” the government has put into €80 million earmarked to raise wages in the sector this year.

“I must say that this is a completely fair increase, because a nurse who has worked for more than a year cannot have the same salary as one who starts her career now,” he confirmed.

The official recalled that in 2022 “it was possible to agree with the majority of nurses, which solved the problem of lack of promotion that had been protracted since 2004.”

“At that time, we estimated that about 20,000 nurses would be reclassified in their careers, and about 16,000 have already done so and received retroactively to January 2022,” he noted.

Manuel Pizarro said that he “expected that there was a very intense dialogue with professionals in the field of health, and the government made great efforts to alleviate the situation.”

The Union of Portuguese Nurses (SEP) went on strike for February 7, given that the Decree-Law recently published by the guardianship exacerbates the situation of career injustice by not taking into account the points earned by nurses who were promoted to specialists in the competition between 2005 and 2011.

Trade unionist Fatima Monteiro said last week that with the entry into force of Decree-Law 80-B/2022, “a specialist nurse with 20 years of experience earns less than a colleague with 10 or 5 years of professional experience.” .

For the union, the decree-law “does not meet the needs as the government unacceptably refuses to pay retroactively to 2018, ignores the professional experience of many colleagues with employment contracts and does not resolve all situations of relative injustice.”