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“The unconditional dismissal of nurses shows, as we have always denounced, that precarious contracts are not a solution,” defends the Portuguese Union of Nurses (SEP) in a letter sent to the Minister of Health on the “dismissal” of 86 nurses. The president of the SEP, José Carlos Martins, warns that “even this is not the time to count ‘shotguns’, much less make care units reliably depend on the ‘excellent map’ and what it will dictate in terms of Fixed expenses here A few months. “
The letter to Marta Temido was sent after the Order of Nurses alerted last Friday about the dismissal of nursing professionals, whose contract would end at the end of the month, at the Braga Hospital. The situation was denounced by nurses who began to receive dismissal letters, after having served two four-month fixed-term work contracts. The leader of the Order of Nurses, Ana Rita Cavaco, has already considered inadmissible that the Braga Hospital is notifying and announcing dismissals of nurses with eight months of experience in intensive care. A situation that occurs, he says, in the middle of the second wave of the pandemic, with all the country’s health services under pressure and with difficulties in hiring nurses, “as the authorities themselves admit.”
In the letter sent to Marta Temido at the end of last week, José Carlos Martins reiterated the union’s demands, realizing that the SEP was aware that the administration of the Braga hospital intends to “fire” 86 nurses.
“If nothing is done for factual knowledge of what nurses think and feel, we have no doubt that the feeling that they already have to be ‘disposable’ will worsen”, warns the SEP in the letter, where it states: ” therefore, it is required that these nurses continue to work at the Hospital de Braga and their fixed-term contracts become permanent contracts ”.
The SEP explains that all these nurses were admitted in March, in the context of the necessary responses to the pandemic situation, having signed a fixed-term employment contract, with a duration of four months. After the first renewal of the contract, now, in November, the second renewal would take place.
The SEP continues that “unacceptably”, the administration of that hospital notified all these nurses of the termination of their contracts, “unless the Braga Hospital obtains express authorization to change the link to an indefinite contract.”
“Now, under the terms of Decree Law No. 89/2020, of October 16, it is possible to convert these fixed-term contracts into indefinite contracts. Given that the reference to the establishment of 912 permanent contracts is true, as a limit in national terms (which has always merited our opposition), the aforementioned diploma establishes that you may authorize new conversions. provided that the need is justified by the highest management body of the hospital; workers perform functions corresponding to permanent needs; there are vacant places on the staff map; if the maximum number of legally permitted contract renewals has been verified ”, states the SEP in the letter sent to the public official.
For the SEP, regarding the number of renewals, there are no doubts about the need for nurses to be attending to permanent needs, except, it says, “a better and well-founded opinion.” Regarding the existence of vacant positions on the personnel map, the union points out that “even this is not the time to count ‘shotguns’, much less depend on the provision of safe care for the ‘excellent map’ and what you dictate. in terms of fixed expenses in a few months ”, concluding that“ either people’s lives, including professionals, count or not! ”.
According to the SEP, the management of personnel maps should be the responsibility of the administrations, taking into account that they are the ones who know, due to their proximity and their management tools, their needs.
“We are no longer in phase 1 of the pandemic. Despite the availability and responsible way in which the nurses responded to the call, allowing them to be always present, fatigue accumulates and, more serious, the generalized feeling that no matter how much they give it, it is not valued, and it deepens. “He warns, pointing out to Marta Temido that” there have already been several nurses “who, having been admitted under this four-month contract, left before the end of the contract because they were offered another, in private hospitals and even with lower salaries .
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