Medical unions call again, starting this Monday, to support the third weekly strike of the year by white coats in the face of a new failure of negotiations with the Ministry of Health to improve their conditions and in a climate of mutual accusations of manipulating their conversations.
Since the previous strike in March, the Ministry and the strike committee - made up of the Spanish Confederation of Medical Unions (CESM), Andalusian Medical Union (SMA), Metges de Catalunya (MC), Association of Doctors and Higher Graduates of Madrid (Amyts), Basque Medical Union (SME) and Independent Union of Galician Doctors (O’MEGA) - have met up to four times.
Among them, there was an intermediate breakdown, both parties resumed dialogue after Easter with the intention of moving forward, but the conflict opened by the reform of the framework statute has become so entrenched in recent days that it has reached its peak with the resignation request of Mónica García by the strike committee and other groups such as the MIR Association.
Something that the Minister of Health has rejected, who intends to maintain "the same momentum", she stated last Thursday in the Senate, where she accused the unions of "on one hand agreeing and on the other breaking agreements".
His version is that, behind closed doors, the committee accepts the agreements, which he breaks as soon as he leaves. "They like the agreement, but they don't know how to sell it. They like the agreement, but since they don't know if they will be able to sell it outside or take the credit, they are not going to sign it," he said.
From the Ministry, "everything possible" has been done to de-escalate the conflict, going as far as opening "a path to a solution through the Basic Statute of Public Employees" to create specific negotiation tables for the collective within the scope of the communities.
This proposal, according to the minister, was accepted by the committee; to demonstrate it, she read the transcript of one of the meetings in which a union representative approved the offer, making it subject to the approval of the communities.
For this reason, he called the autonomies to a meeting on Thursday, to finally suspend it that same day given the decision of the unions to maintain the strike in a statement they sent the night before.
The committee accuses the Ministry of "manipulating the narrative" and assures that they rejected its offer for being "unviable from a legal standpoint" because the current regulatory framework "prevents the creation of its own negotiation tables" without a prior modification of basic state legislation.
The consequence is a third weekly strike in healthcare centers throughout Spain, which will be followed by others until at least June if the conflict is not resolved.
There are communities in which CESM has called its regional strikes coinciding with the national one to claim its own powers from their respective governments; this is the case of Aragon, which scheduled its strike from April 20 to 24 and which will join the state one; Valencian Community or the Canary Islands (in its case, April 30 and May 4).
Outside the unions confederated in CESM, there is also a strike called in Catalonia by Metges de Catalunya, which will also hold a demonstration today in Barcelona, or in Madrid by Amyts, which has planned concentrations in different hospitals and in front of the Ministry on Wednesday afternoon.
