Gabriel del Pozo, general secretary of CESM, and Manuel Cascos, president of Satse.
While the Spanish health debate on how to apply, and its suitability or not, the working day of 32 hours and four days a week, Belgium has become news after approving a labor reform that proposes a new model that until then had not been formally considered in our country: four-day workday without reducing hours and flexible weeks. It is a model that includes the possibility of concentrating the working week in four days or flexible hours to give workers more freedom.
Given the hypothetical scenario in which an equal model moved to Spain, Medical Writing He has consulted doctors and nurses about the possibility that the Belgian route ends up coming to fruition in our country. So from CESM recall that proposals to reduce the working weekl “there have been several in recent years”. The one that has gained the most weight in this time was the one proposed by the party of Íñigo Errejón, More Country, which advocates working four days a week. That yes, also lowering the weekly working hours to 32. In fact, Errejón himself has declared through a message on Twitter, regarding what was approved in Belgium, that “working 10 hours a day to free a day is a attack on conciliation and quality of life. They have gone the other way.”
Meanwhile, CESM’s position is that “the approach like the one that has just been approved in Belgium it is difficult to apply to doctors, as it is the current situation of human resources”. “To be able to consider an implantation here, we would need to have perfectly sized medical templates, something very far from our reality”, lament from the organization to this newspaper. Although if the Belgian model could be carried out “providing the means for its application”, they acknowledge, “we would be talking about an important advance”.
Nursing claims to recover the 35 hours throughout Spain
For its part, the Nursing Union Bet considers that, before addressing the possibility of reducing the weekly working day to four days, what is “absolutely urgent and necessary” is that in all the autonomous communities recover the labor right lost in 2010 to work 35 hours per weekinstead of 37.5 hours, something that also happens in the field of medicine.
Currently, more than 105,000 medical and nursing professionals from seven autonomous communities still they have not been able to avail themselves of this right again. Specifically, professionals from Aragon, the Balearic Islands, Castile and León, Catalonia, Galicia, Madrid and Murcia, as well as Ceuta and Melilla, have maintained for nearly ten years the extension of the working day approved by the government of Mariano Rajoy due to the economic crisis, so they continue to work 37.5 hours a week.
For Satse, this is something totally “unjustifiable” and supposes a clear situation of “Discrimination in the work area” with respect to those who provide their services in Andalusia, Asturias, the Canary Islands, Cantabria Castilla-La Mancha, the Valencian Community, the Basque Country, Extremadura, La Rioja and Navarra, where the 35-hour work week has already been reinstated.
For this reason, Satse does not rule out that new labor scenarios be addressed, but as long as the situation that existed more than 10 years ago throughout the State has returned, which, in addition, “It would lead to an increase in the number of nurses, nurses and physiotherapists, something that is more necessary than everafter the Covid-19 pandemic, to guarantee safe and quality health care throughout the country”.
Although it may contain statements, data or notes from health institutions or professionals, the information contained in Medical Writing is edited and prepared by journalists. We recommend the reader that any questions related to health be consulted with a health professional.