The Union of Portuguese Nurses classified today as "extremely positive" the adherence to the strike at the Centro Hospitalar Universitário do Algarve (CHUA), which estimates to range between 70% in Faro and 100% in the Basic Emergency Service of Albufeira.
The stoppage called by the Portuguese Nurses Union (SEP) at CHUA started at 08:00 am and continues until 00:00 am, covering the morning and afternoon shifts, and the union leader Sónia Lopes told Lusa that, “at the Hospital de Portimão, there is an 80% adherence", while in the "Faro, where all the data has not yet been collected, will be around 70%”.
CHUA also manages the hospitals in Lagos and the Basic Emergency Services in Vila Real de Santo António, Loulé and Albufeira, where there are “100% attendances”, underlined Sónia Lopes, from the SEP of the Algarve, specifying that this is the case in Albufeira.
“This effectively demonstrates the dissatisfaction that nurses have in relation to this impasse with the board of directors”, said Sónia Lopes, recalling that CHUA nursing professionals demand the effective accounting of years of service for career progression and consequent payment of retroactive.
The same source criticized the CHUA board of directors for, on Monday, having postponed the meeting it had scheduled with the SEP for Tuesday, and regretted that it was a problem that “has been dragging on since 2018”, the year in which that nurses should have seen their careers unfrozen, progressed and being paid retroactively.
“There is zero tolerance for this board of directors”, he said, warning that the nurses will escalate the forms of struggle if the CHUA administration does not respond to this situation at the meeting that was rescheduled for February 14.
Sónia Lopes warned that the postponement of the meeting by the CHUA "only inflamed the spirits and discontent of nurses in general even more" and, "if on the 14th all these issues are not resolved", the SEP can move on to "more strike days.
"The responsibility and constraints that they bring to users and the institution could be avoided by this board of directors, it is in their hands that this does not happen", said Sónia Lopes, recalling that this stoppage follows the two-hour partial strike that was held on the 02nd of February.
The CHUA nurses maintained the strike scheduled for today, after the hospital board of directors postponed the meeting scheduled for Tuesday, in which they expected a solution to their demands, according to the union source.
The SEP regretted that the unavailability of the CHUA board of directors to meet with the nurses was communicated on Monday afternoon, “a few hours away from the most anticipated meeting of recent times” and when “effective responses to the problems were required ” of those health professionals.
For the union structure, this is “another setback in the relationship of trust between the administration, the nurses and the SEP”, which will from now on have “zero tolerance” with the CHUA administration, despite having pointed out the next 14th of February to carry out the now postponed meeting.
Nurses demand “justice” in the interpretation of the decree-law on the accounting of years of service for career progression and the consequent payment of retroactive payments.
In the case of the CHUA, points are not being counted for nurses who started working in the second half of each year, for nurses who had precarious contracts or for specialist nurses with an individual work contract, a situation that the SEP considers that the administration should already have resolved of the Algarve Hospital Center.
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