This Tuesday, November 28th, the Government reached an "interim agreement" with the Independent Doctors' Union (SIM) for an increase in salaries in January and ended the negotiations. The National Federation of Doctors (FNAM) refused.
The announcement was made in a statement by the Ministry of Health after a new round of negotiations with the unions.
In a statement, the guardianship says that the “salary increase will apply to all doctors, giving priority to lower salaries”.
Thus, «assistants of all specialties with a 40-hour schedule will have an increase of 14,6%, graduate assistants of 12,9% and senior graduate assistants of 10,9%. A similar model will be applied to each of the medical careers».
In the case of interns, the increase is 15,7% for interns in the fourth year and beyond, 7,9% for doctors who are attending the first, second and third years of the specialty, and 6,1% for common year inmates. In addition to these values, there are transversal measures approved by the Government for young people, such as total exemption from IRS in the first year of activity, 75% in the second year, 50% in the third and fourth years and 25% in the fifth year. There will also be annual salary compensation of 697 euros for the payment of tuition fees.
According to the Ministry, «this agreement will be accompanied, in the coming days, by the regulation of full dedication and new incentives for Family Health Units and Integrated Responsibility Centers, already approved by the Government».
«The approximately 2000 doctors specializing in General and Family Medicine who transition to the Model B Family Health Units at the beginning of 2024 will have an increase of around 60% in their remuneration. Doctors in primary health care and hospitals who want to join the full dedication regime will have a salary increase of more than 43% in January», he adds.
However, the agreement was not accepted by the National Federation of Doctors, which accuses minister Manuel Pizarro of giving the “final push” for doctors to “leave the SNS”.
The FNAM says that it presented, in the last counter-proposal, a “single salary table of 35 basic hours, allowing, based on this, to build with justice, equity and transparency, the remunerations of the remaining regimes of a subsistent nature (40-hour regimes). hours, 35 hours in Exclusive Dedication and 42 hours in Exclusive Dedication) or new regimes (35 hours+5 hours, for PD)».
In the discussion, the FNAM accuses the Ministry of Health of not “even accepting its own table, with the application of the same hourly rate for the 40-hour regime and for all other regimes, which would correspond to an average global increase of 22 % of the basic remuneration for all doctors, and which the FNAM would be willing to accept».
«The proposal presented by the Government maintained the intransigence of a salary update that is discretionary depending on the work regime, varying between 10.9% and 14.6%, and falling far from compensating for the loss of purchasing power over the last decade. Therefore, doctors in Portugal will continue to be among the lowest paid in Europe, and with increasingly degraded conditions, even after the unprecedented sacrifice that doctors made during the pandemic», he concludes.
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