The Portuguese Nurses Union decreed shift strikes and concentrations for units where the Decree-Law that allows career progression and point counting is not being applied correctly. And it wants the guardianship to intervene.
On the 2nd, it was in the Algarve, on the 3rd in Viseu, tomorrow it is in Lisbon, in the IPO; then it will be in Porto, Loures, Vila Franca, Setúbal, Figueira da Foz, Cova da Beira, Médio Tejo, Oeste, Coimbra, Viseu-Tondela, ARS of Lisbon and Centre and so on. The nurses elected February as the month to protest against the injustices that have not been repaired by Decree-Law 80-B/2022 and against the units that are not applying it correctly. “We have been fighting for so long to correct injustices, and then a decree-law is published that does not correct all of them, and even so there are still institutions that are not applying the decree correctly, such as the Lisbon IPO,” explains Elisabete Amoedo, a nurse at the institution and national leader of the Portuguese Nurses Union (SEP).
She also says that there are high expectations with this strike, because “this limit situation was only brought about because the professionals are very, very unmotivated, and even hurt by the way the decree-law is being applied,” she argues. “Most of the nurses at the Lisbon IPO are on a CIT (Individual Work Contract) regime and didn’t have points counted, and now they are faced with bad counts done by the institution. We have been fighting this fight for four years, the professionals are not only tired, but also demotivated, feeling that this situation is yet another tremendous injustice,” explains Elisabete Amoedo.
At the same time, he recalls that the decree-law itself did not correct all the injustices identified by the class and that were always put on the negotiation table. Therefore, with these “strikes, namely the one that will take place in the Lisbon IPO and in other units until the end of the month, we want the rights that are due to us to be reinstated, we want to regularize what was done badly and we want the government to find a way to solve the injustices in the decree itself.
And he exemplifies: “We have specialist nurses with the same salary as generalist nurses and with many years of service. This cannot be maintained, because it is a situation that generates conflicts and demotivation. Since the guardianship was not careful enough to include our demands in the decree, we now expect them to intervene and to give instructions to the health unit administrations to apply the law correctly once and for all,” stresses the SEP leader.
