The ‘blackout’ of thousands of overtime hours in the computer system reported last week by medical workers, nurses and workers in public functions (administrative and others) at the Western Lisbon Local Health Unit (ULSLO) led the unions that represent them to schedule a general plenary for this Monday, 16th. The plenary took place this afternoon in the auditorium of the São Francisco Xavier Hospital, one of the three that make up the ULS (Egas Moniz and Santa Cruz), but, in the end, there were “more complaints reported problems”, they told DN.
In the end, “a motion was approved that provides, firstly, the path of negotiation with the ULS administration, we will have the first meeting on the 19th. If this does not work, other forms of protest are planned, such as strike”, explained André Gomes, president of the Southern Doctors’ Union (SMS), and Isabel Barbosa, of the Portuguese Nurses’ Union (SEP).
According to these union structures, “workers’ dissatisfaction is great”, because there are several situations that have not been resolved for years, such as “the lack of payment of overtime, the recording of overtime appropriately and in accordance with the law and the failure to comply with the career progression of professionals and the application of the performance evaluation system”.
To DN, André Gomes even says that the problems go far beyond “the ‘blackout’ of thousands of hours in the computer system recorded last week and which the administration says has to do with the migration of data, which is being resolved. The issue is that there are doctors with two thousand overtime hours, accumulated over several years, which have not been paid.”
For example, “There are resident doctors, those who are specializing, who don’t even have a record of their overtime, and therefore can’t even receive it. In other words, a doctor who must leave at 4pm but who systematically leaves at 6pm has to receive two additional hours of overtime and these are not recorded. These hours have to be approved by the managers on duty and recorded on the platform to then be paid.” Another example, “the ‘Time Exchange’ should only be to record time compensation, when the worker works 10 or 15 minutes more in a day, which is not paid, but is also used to record overtime. Overtime is one thing, hour compensation is another. That’s how it is in the law.”
This situation also affects other professional classes, but, in the case of nurses, the SEP leader explains that there are more situations that do not comply with the law. “ULS is not respecting nursing career progression and has not even started applying the performance evaluation system, which also harms professionals.”
Isabel Barbosa guarantees that these problems are not new. “Last year, in February, we asked management for a meeting, but we didn’t get a response. Then, we asked for explanations and we also didn’t get a response, nor were the problems resolved and workers’ dissatisfaction has been increasing.”
In the motion approved in the general plenary that brought together “more than one hundred professionals from the São Francisco Xavier, Egas Moniz and Santa Cruz hospitals, it was decided that the workers will demand that the law be complied with”. The three unions and management will meet on the 19th.
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