French unions call for major nationwide protest and strike in public hospitals

Nine unions and organisations are joining forces on Tuesday for a day of nationwide protest rallies and strike action in French public hospitals and healthcare centers. They warn that the situation has reached a critical phase due to lack of staff and resources and will likely get worse over the summer period.

A day of protests and a strike is being organised on Tuesday to raise awareness with regards to the “situation of the public hospital and also that of the medico-social and social sectors”, unions wrote in a press release.

At a time when public hospitals are suffering from a serious shortage of careers and are worried about the summer, “access to primary care is becoming increasingly complicated and hospitals are no longer fulfilling their role as a public service of last resort“, the organisations said.

Due to a lack of medical staff, more than a hundred services have been forced to limit their activity or are preparing to do so, according to figures released at the end of May by the Samu-Urgences de France (SUdF) organisation.

Rallies are planned in at least 50 towns, according to a list drawn up on Friday by the CGT union: in Paris in front of the health ministry from 1.30pm as well as in Grenoble, Marseille, Nantes and Toulouse among the main ones, but also smaller ones such as Aurillac, Epernay or Cherbourg.

“The Covid-19 crisis has totally exhausted the health workers who were already at their wits end,” Thierry Amouroux of the national union for nurses (SNPI) wrote on social media.

“We were made to believe that things would change but the disillusion is extremely bitter“.

‘Emergency mission’

This day of protest comes a week after French president Emmanuel Macron announced an “emergency mission” of one month to be able to “from this summer bring very strong answers to consolidate our emergencies in this period”.

François Braun, president of the Samu-Urgences de France union has been tasked with submitting a report on 1 July at the latest to the labour minister which will explain where the shortages are “territory by territory” in order to be able to put a figure on them and “illustrate the first solutions”, Macron explained.

“We are also going to look at the difficulties observed hospital by hospital: fatigue of health workers, repeated sick leave, inability to recruit […] to have a complete map at the beginning of the summer”.

At the end of May, the main gynaecologists’ union warned that the shortage of nurses had “reached a critical level” in maternity wards, posing a risk of “unexpected summer closures”.

“It’s an accident waiting to happen”, warned the Syndicat des gynécologues-obstétriciens de France (Syngof) in a press release, warning of the lack of doctors (including paediatricians and anaesthetists) and midwives.

There is also the question of reintegrating non-Covid vaccinated health workers back into the system to help with staffing issues.

This issue was raised by Macron himself during the election campaign in April but has not yet been clarified.

Covid vaccinations have been mandatory for health workers in hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes since 15 September. Those who chose not to vaccinate themselves were suspended. [RFI]

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