Workers at SUCH (Serviço de Utilização Comum dos Hospitais) who provide maintenance, hygiene and food services at the Algarve’s public hospitals have gone on strike to demand better working conditions.
These workers demand the hiring of additional workers, a 4% increase in their salaries (with a minimum of €40 per month), 25 days holiday, a reduction in working hours to 35 per week as well as re-categorising staff according to the tasks they actually perform.
The employees also want an appropriate and sufficient number of uniforms for each staff member, thermal gloves and payment of public holidays and nighttime hours.
Another of the claims is the installation of an air conditioning system in the bar area at Lagos Hospital as per a petition delivered to the company on July 21, 2016 which has been ignored.
At the same time, the national federation of public health service workers (Federação Nacional dos Sindicatos dos Trabalhadores das Funções Públicas e Sociais) has announced that its members will strike on Friday January 20th.
Workers say they were guarantees a 35-hour working week, the hiring of more staff and the end to an overtime ban, all promised by Health Minister, Adalberto Campos Fernandes and now called “a sack of false promises” by union leader Luís Pesca.
The parliamentary group of the CDS-PP wants to hear, in a Parliamentary Health Committee meeting, why all the directors of the Algarve Hospital Center handed in their resignation.
Last week the deputy clinical director and four department directors of the Algarve Hospital Center presented their resignation due to a "lack of conditions to continue.”
Those MPs want to know precisely what problems the directors are referring to and are equally concerned at the long waiting times at the Barlavento hospital in Portimão which seems close to melt-down
Also on the ‘list of things to discuss endlessly but do nothing about’ is the decision to postpone the construction of a new hospital for the Algarve that was started in 2008 and has not progressed.
