The CCOO, UGT and CSIF unions have called for an indefinite strike in the medical transport by ambulance from the Valencian Community from Tuesday December 3 for “a interesting agreement», as they point out in a joint press release.
In this regard, they emphasize that the strike resumes after the postponement of the initial call, once found “sufficient normality for the good development of medical transport”, because this service public”outsourced relies on the low cost and poor conditions of staff, who can legally perform up to 420 additional hours annually.
This is why they demand “a worthy agreement so that 2,000 people workers employed in the sector cease to be stafflow cost‘of the Health Valencian. However, they regret that after a year of negotiations, employers and their main companies, which provide public health services, “have still not made a proposal to reach an agreement”.
In addition, they criticize the fact that the Ministry of Health “also did not deign to attend the meetings requested by the unions to ask them to mediate for a peaceful solution to the conflict.”
The service of ambulance of the Ministry of Health was awarded in the summer of 2022, for a period of four years. The same companies who tendered freely and to whom the service was reallocated “now denies staff their right to reevaluate their wages and to improve their working conditions” and the employers “are not even offering the very insufficient increase of 3% per year to which they had committed to the Ministry of Health when they obtained the service”.
The organizing unions demand the equalization of salaries with the rest of the autonomous communities, where they are only charged for fixed concepts between 20% and 45% more, while in the Valencian Community the personnel of the sector “subsist with salaries of between 1,050 euros. and 1,200 euros net for 40 hours of work per week, depending on the category, with night shifts and Monday to Sunday”, according to the unions.
An “untenable” situation
In this regard, they argue that income “represents only the cost of a disproportionate number of excess hours, approaching 420 hours of overtime per year in some provinces.” The situation of the models is “untenable“, since the salaries do not correspond to the training and responsibility required, nor to the working hours worked”, affirm the unions which call “to adapt the professional categories to the required training and to significantly improve the variable concepts for the teams night work, Sunday work. , holidays, transport and food bonuses.
“Valencian citizens do not deserve an essential public service supported in a manner minimal cost and what does this imply terms abusive labor practices of the workforce, this service is outsourced, not to optimize it, but to make it cheaper, at the cost of the exploitation of workers, while other autonomy has already committed itself on the path to direct management through different models”, they conclude.
