Nurses are celebrating International Nurses Day this Friday with a strike demanding better working conditions, hiring more specialists and fair and legal career scoring.
The strike was called by the Union of Portuguese Nurses (SEP) and the Democratic Union of Nurses of Portugal (Sindepor). :00 am, ending all stops at 24:00.
Delegates, leaders and activists of the Union of Nurses of Portugal are scheduled to meet at 11:00 in front of the Ministry of Health on Avenida João Crisostomo in Lisbon.
The cessation is due to deteriorating working conditions, increased use of overtime and related fatigue among nurses, and forms of fighting are expected to intensify, the SEP president said.
According to AKP President José Carlos Martins, the nurses want to demand “by this struggle and this simultaneous celebration” that “the Ministry of Health issues guidelines for fair and legal scoring with the goal of career advancement.”
The union member is also asking for guidance so that nurses who were pregnant and did not move into the specialty nurse category for that reason should move into this new category.
The SEP is also calling for the restoration of wage parity between careers in nursing and higher technical careers in public administration, increased hiring of nurses, and earlier retirement.
José Carlos Martins said he expected “good enforcement” of the strike, in which a minimum of services would be performed.
The strike organized by Sindepor, in the words of its president Carlos Ramalho, covers the Azores and Madeira, “simply to give these colleagues the opportunity to show solidarity with nurses on the continent”, since the “opening of negotiations” held in the two archipelagos “has already brought concrete results” for the nurses working there.
Among the demands that prompted Sindepor to mark this strike are the immediate hiring of nurses with stable contracts to comply with safe staffing and the autonomy for institutions to do so; the opening of competitions for various categories of nurses and the completion of those in progress, as well as the correct application of Decree-Law 80-B/2022 with the payment of retroactive payments until 2018.
In addition, the opening of negotiations to define and approve a new nursing career that values the profession, corrects inequalities, injustices and discrimination, compensates for the risk, wear and tear of the profession, provides special conditions for access to retirement without penalties, revision of the salary scale and time promotions; and reforming the existing evaluation system to adapt it to the specific characteristics of the profession.
The AKP announced that it had already requested a meeting with the Ministry of Health, considering that “in view of the urgency of the decision, its holding as soon as possible is justified” in order to avoid the continuation of hostilities.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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