Hospital doctors have chosen to file a strike notice for this Monday, July 3. This movement has taken on a certain scale with more than 50% of strikers according to the unions. The latter ask to be received by Emmanuel Macron in order to negotiate a salary increase with the government.
“We are between 50 and 100% participation in the strike”, said during a press conference the emergency physician Jean-François Cibien, president of the inter-union Action Practitioners Hospital (APH) who called for this day of stock. For example, he put forward a rate of 80% of strikers in La Rochelle, and 65% in Annecy.
As usual, the strike did not interrupt the activity of hospitals, doctors being assigned as needed to ensure continuity of care. But for anesthetist Anne Wernet, “in unionist memory, we have never seen so many people mobilizing, and not just in post specialties” like hers. Symptom of the “degraded situation” of a “hospital in the process of being emptied of the supply of care”, underlined the psychiatrist Emmanuel Loeb, recalling the 30% of unfilled positions, occupied largely by temporary workers, interns or foreign doctors.
The fault is “a loss of purchasing power of more than 20% in twenty years” in “a context of medical demography at half mast”, explained resuscitator Yves Rebuffat. “The fewer of us there are, the less we are paid to stay in the hospital,” he laments. The demands focus in particular on night guards, which the Minister of Health François Braun nevertheless upgraded by 50% upon his arrival in July 2022 – the compensation now exceeds 400 euros gross for twelve hours of service.
But the measure is only extended until the end of August, and negotiations are at a standstill pending arbitration from Bercy and Matignon. “We worked, we built things”, then “we are told that there is no more envelope” to finance it, regretted the emergency doctor Jean-François Cibien. “We want 500 to 600 euros” for these guards and that they be “taken into account for retirement”, he summarized, asking “to be received by the President of the Republic” to win his case.