Between waiting lists and staff shortages, the NHS is increasingly in difficulty, hence interventions and agreements on additional services for healthcare professions. Tramparulo (FP Cgil Lombardia): “Workers do not want to work harder but want more economic recognition for their professionalism”
June 13. 2024 – Public health in Italy suffers from major critical issues, both in terms of personnel and in terms of responding to the needs of the population.
The topic of waiting lists, of the time needed to carry out a visit or an exam, is very hot and various measures are being taken to take it by the horns.
But is it really like that? We talk about it with Lello Tramparulo, secretary of the FP Cgil Lombardy.
“The Government, like the Lombardy Region, essentially says to healthcare personnel: Want to earn more, work harder! -, begins Tramparulo – And we know well that their answer is: No thanks, we want to be paid more!”.
What does Legislative Decree 73 of 7 June 2024 provide?
“This legislative intervention concerns the ‘Urgent measures to reduce the waiting list times for healthcare services’ and confirms the government’s desire to ask public health workers to increase their already unsustainable workload to guarantee first visits and diagnostic tests – explains the trade unionist -. Furthermore, this measure reiterates a strategy already consolidated over time”.
Meaning what?
“Already with Legislative Decree 34 of 2023, the so-called ‘Bill Decree’, the executive had allocated huge resources to eliminate waiting lists, providing specific tariffs for both healthcare personnel in the sector and for doctors”, replies Tramparulo.
What is the difference with Legislative Decree 73?
“With this decree we even go so far as to hypothesize differentiated taxation (a sort of flat tax), with a rate of 15% to be applied to additional services, effectively differentiating the taxation regime applied to male and female workers. Here the message being conveyed is wrong: you pay less taxes if you work outside your working hours – underlines the secretary of FP CGIL Lombardia -. The issue of additional services, moreover, also finds space in the guideline for the 2022/2024 contractual renewal, where the need to define a homogeneous hourly rate for all bodies of the National Health Service is recalled, in addition to compliance with the rules regarding working hours”.
Even in Lombardy you have signed an agreement on additional services.
“Across the minutes of May 22nd between the Region and the trade unions, we have defined the guidelines (subject for comparison provided for by the national contract at regional level) with a total amount of 40 million euros for 2024. The agreement provides for standardizing the hourly rates (50 euros) for additional services, both in order to cope with the waiting lists and due to the lack of staff, as required by the latest budget law, 213/2023 – summarizes Tramparulo -. The agreement also reiterates the exceptional nature of these services and, here too, the limits established by the regulations and the national contract with respect to working hours. We will monitor these points with the utmost attention both at regional level and in individual companies – he adds -: for us, health and safety in the workplace and the quality of services provided to citizens and citizens remain essential objectives”.
But are this agreement and the decrees for additional benefits steps forward?
“They cannot and must not be the solution: workers are exhausted by increasingly heavy workloads, by missed rest periods and holidays that are set aside due to staff shortages. These interventions, despite the funding, have not reduced the waiting lists nor filled the staffing gaps in public health facilities. In Lombardy in 2023 we will record a slight increase in staff compared to the previous year – adds Tramparulo -, while the competitions continue to register a lower number of candidates than the positions advertised”.
So?
“The crucial point is how to make working for public health attractive. The government must work on this. We have been claiming for some time how it is done: starting from better working conditions thanks to organizational well-being, careful and sensitive organization of departments and also reconciling it with personal life times; renewing the national contract in dignified and valorising terms, on a regulatory and salary level, also increasing the allowances and removing the spending ceilings on the additional salary; making company bargaining enforceable. This can and must be done.”
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