Doctors and health workers go on strike, calling for better working conditions

The largest health workers' union, Metges de Catalunya, called a strike on Friday, coinciding with a Spain-wide strike, to call for better working conditions and the reform of the overall statute that the Spanish ministry plans to reform.

"Medical staff are angry," Xavier Lleonart, secretary general of the workers' union, told the Catalan News Agency (ACN).

They urge the Catalan health department to reduce on-call duty days, and to slowly trim them to reach a maximum of 12 consecutive hours on-call, instead of the current 24 hours.

Lleonart said that this is the "start of a process that needs to end with solutions" and that it is "very probable" that there will be more strikes in the upcoming months. A few days before the strike, he said that doctors are "fed up with being mistreated."

The organization has been asking for years for a specific working agreement for doctors. They say that for many years, there has been a "low-cost" health service that is only based on"paying and mistreating professionals, especially doctors."

Some other requests include having a salary reflecting their qualifications, as in many cases, they require over a decade of courses.

It is coincidental that the doctors went on strike at the same time that other demonstrations are taking place in favor of Palestine and the Global Sumud Flotilla. The Metges de Catalunya union called for a strike back in early September.

A strike held in 2018, which lasted four days, ended with a reduction in workload.

Around 2,000 health workers demonstrated on Friday at the ministry's headquarters in Barcelona, coinciding with the strike. After the demonstration, some stepped outside of the area where the ministry is located, and blocked Travessera de les Corts for around 30 minutes.

At the moment, organizers said that there is no dialogue with authorities to listen to their demands. Despite the existence of a negotiating team that was aware of the strike, there was "no response."

Because of this, "health workers have said: 'enough,' and therefore, this movement cannot be stopped until a solution has been reached."

The union said that 58% of workers went on strike across Catalonia. In Barcelona, 60% of the staff did not go to work, 43% in Girona, 40% in Tarragona, and 32% in Lleida.

Meanwhile, the Catalan health department said that 9% of doctors joined the strike on Friday, based on data from 51% of health centers.

The figure includes doctors, pharmacists, psychologists, odontologists, members of the chemical or biochemical departments, and other medical staff.