Insular Workers Denounce That Stabilization Has Turned Them into "Exiles"

A group of workers from the Hospital Insular de Lanzarote has sent an open letter to the public and the media denouncing the consequences of the labor personnel stabilization process, which, they claim, has led to a situation of "absolute helplessness" for professionals with more than two decades of service.

In the letter, a worker from the center, who claims to have 20 years of seniority, explains that, like most of her colleagues, she is part of the interim labor personnel specialized in Geriatrics and maintains that for years they accepted temporality "as a temporary toll," convinced that the stabilization process promoted by the European Union would allow them to consolidate their positions as permanent labor personnel.

However, she assures that "how wrong we were" and recalls the negotiations for the transfer of the Hospital Insular from the Cabildo to the Canary Islands Health Service (SCS), when they requested an opposition process to consolidate their positions. According to her account, the response they received was: "What are you worried about if the SCS never holds oppositions? You will be interim for life," a statement that, she maintains, "time has turned into a trap of precariousness."

The letter points out that the stabilization process initiated in 2022, "theoretically designed to protect workers from the abuse of temporality," has been executed "so perversely in 2026," leaving professionals "literally 'destabilized'."

The signatories acknowledge that "as early as 2022" they should have denounced "unjust bases," but they assure that, "due to ignorance, and blind faith in those who should have protected our rights," they trusted a procedure that they believed "would include everyone." Now, they state that "the Administration has given us a devastating blow."

In the letter, they list the consequences that, in their opinion, this process has had. Among them, they denounce a "loss of rights and precariousness," by ensuring that labor personnel with more than 20 years occupying a position at the Hospital Insular "are degraded to performing substitutions, returning to the starting point of temporality at a mature age."

Likewise, they speak of "forced exile and uprooting", indicating that, "in just seven days", workers from Lanzarote have gone from being temporary employees on the island to becoming statutory personnel assigned to centers such as the General Hospital of Fuerteventura Virgen de la Peña, the Doctor Negrín Hospital, the Maternal and Child Hospital, or the General Hospital of La Gomera. According to them, this situation implies "doubling housing expenses, breaking up family units, and abandoning our social environment in less than 10 days".

They also denounce a "blockade of Service Commissions", assuring that, although they are happy for those who have managed to stabilize their positions, they demand to know "why the Management is now systematically denying us access to the Service Commissions that had been promised to us to avoid this exile, forcing us to request leaves of absence with all that it implies".

Furthermore, they accuse the Management of Health Services of Lanzarote of maintaining "institutional obscurantism", stating that they are facing "silence, ambiguous verbal responses, phone calls that the Management does not answer, and an absolute lack of transparency in the criteria for assigning positions".

In the final part of the document, the workers pose several questions addressed to the public and public officials, including: "How should professionals with 20 or 24 years of service feel when they are trampled by a stabilization process that we consider unfair?", "How should we accept the lack of clarity and the utter lack of humanity of a Management that has the legal and moral obligation to look after its workers?" or "How does one face, nearing 50 years of age, the order to pack their bags overnight to start from scratch on another island, far from your life?".

They also question "What healthcare security is offered to the patient when professionals whose life experience is exclusively focused on geriatrics are suddenly assigned to areas as disparate as psychiatry, gynecology, or primary care?".

Finally, the signatories recall that those who defended the transfer and dismantling of the Insular Hospital maintained that the healthcare model would be maintained because "the truly valuable thing was 'its highly qualified staff and a pride for all'". Now they ask themselves: "What do they have to say now that the staff that gave life to the care of the Insular is being banished and dispersed throughout the archipelago?" and "Will they continue to maintain the great lie that this healthcare model is going to survive in their cardboard hospital without the hands and knowledge of those who created it?".

The letter concludes by stating that the workers do not deserve "this mistreatment" and that, although they understand that the stabilization of the staff was "a necessary European requirement", they assure that "we will never justify the cruelty, the organizational incompetence, and the absolute lack of empathy of those who make decisions from their offices".