The doctors of Catalonia will continue to negotiate “in extremis” this Tuesday to avoid the strike.

Not this Monday either. after more than five hours of meeting, the syndicate Metges de Catalunya (MC) succeeded in reaching an agreement with the employers and the Conselleria de Salut to call off the public and state-subsidized health care strike planned for this month. January 25 and 26 and on February 1, 2 and 3. After nine-thirty in the evening, the union announced that will continue to trade tomorrow, Tuesday, from 1:30 p.m., the previous day before mobilization begins. This was announced by the general secretary of the MC, Xavier Leonart. There have been progress in the negotiations, but they are not “sufficient”, he assured. The main stumbling block is the The main stumbling block is the doctor’s agenda: the union chooses to set a the number of visits per day, while Salut advocates the “self-organization” of the doctor.

About 25,000 doctors throughout Catalonia, both in health centers and in hospitals, are called to this strike. If it finally takes place, it will be the first time such an event has taken place. second major medical strike in Catalonia in four years, since in November 2018, the doctors of the… primary care stopped for four days. The general feeling on Monday at the Salut headquarters, where journalists waited for hours, is that tomorrow, Tuesday, the mobilization will be called off, but the union also seemed to have moved closer to the employers and to Salut last Wednesday, when they met to negotiate, yet the union was unable to reach an agreement with the employers. nothing was closed today. “There is more chance today that there will be no strike than last Wednesday,” admitted Mr. Lleonart.

Metges de Catalunya complains to Salut of not having been able to propose ” measures with immediate effects”, although both parties agree on the heart of the public health problem: the lack of professionals, planning, working conditions (not only salaries, but also, for example, long hours in primary care, of which 40% are occupied by bureaucratic procedures) and the training hours of doctors. The union demands a calendar for the implementation of the measures.

” In principle there is progress. We found a few more points of consensus with the administration, but that’s not enough to say there’s an agreement,” Mr. Lleonart said. According to the general secretary of the MC, some of the measures of hi are “inconcrete”. And what worries the union the most, he assured, is the impossibility of reaching an agreement with the “conselleria” to alleviate the situation. “impossible agendas”. doctors and “overloads”.

” We ask more concrete. We offer realizations in the number of visits per doctor or the inability to schedule visits at the same time. Hi writes them in a way that makes no mention of the the improvement of lead times, complained Lleonart, who also explained that another part of the “conflict” has to do with the remuneration conditions.

For his part, the deputy director of the Health Service of Catalonia (CatSalut), Alfredo Garcia, is “optimistic” and thinks there are “possibilities” of reaching an agreement. “The union has accepted a proposal from Salut with which we cannot agree because… Negotiation is open. he said. He acknowledged that the main stumbling block is that the union opts for a “Realization” of the number of visits of the doctor, while the “conselleria”, through the intermediary of the “self-organization” of the doctor. Moreover, like Lleonart, he also considered that having a certain budgets of the Generalitat closed “would draw a scenario [de negociación] More comfortable “.