Mais Sindicato workers, which include SAMS employees, are starting this Wednesday a two-day strike organized by Sitese demanding higher wages and a fair and adequate negotiation process.
“Mais Sindicato workers have not reviewed their wages for several years,” Ana Rita Pires of Sitese, a service workers union, told Lusa, adding that there are “workers with 30 years of experience who are earning almost the national minimum wage.”
Síntese accuses Mais Sindicato of taking a position of “huge devaluation in relation to workers’ demands”.
In a press release about the strike, Sitese notes that the workers are “saddened by the neglect of their concerns.”
Sitese assured that Mais Sindicato had long been “adopting” the practice of complete disrespect for workers and ORT. [organizações representativas dos trabalhadores]despite all the efforts they have made to find consensus solutions.”
The union cited “lack of overtime pay by many workers”, “discriminatory practices, especially with respect to bonuses”, “lack of wage increases for over 10 years”, “attempt to obstruct the activity of the trade union movement”, “repeated violation of obligations to trade unions” and ” unacceptable infringement of parental rights.
For this reason, they stressed, and given that “the workers deserve more respect and are waiting for a decent wage increase in line with the worsening cost of living from January,” they decided to give advance notice of the strike, embracing all Mais Sindicato workers from 00:00 on April 19 to 24:00 April 20.
On April 5, contacted by Lusa, Mais Syndicato indicated that negotiations were underway and acknowledged that “all strikes could be disrupted”.
At the time, Mais Sindicato employed 1,359 people.
SAMS, run by Mais Sindicato, is a private healthcare subsystem spread throughout the country that includes the SAMS hospital, the Lisbon Clinical Centre, 17 clinics across the country, an optical service, a parapharmacy and a nursing home, according to their website. .