2023-11-21 10:00:23
While negotiations on working conditions and remuneration are slow, the inter-union, which brings together pharmacists and pharmacy students, is calling for a day of national mobilization on November 21.
( AFP / KENZO TRIBOUILLARD )
Faced with a deteriorating situation in the profession, which has 120,000 employees in pharmacies, the unions of pharmacists and pharmacy students are calling for demonstrations on Tuesday, November 21 to demand the rapid opening of conventional negotiations in order to
“compensate for inflation” and for the implementation of an expected reform of studies.
Organized by the National Association of Pharmacy Students of France (Anepf) and supported by several representative organizations, including the Federation of Pharmaceutical Unions of France (FSPF) and the Union of Community Pharmacists Unions (USPO), marches are planned in particular in Bordeaux, Grenoble, Nancy or Nantes. In Paris, demonstrators will march from the Paris-Cité pharmacy faculty to the Ministry of Health in the early afternoon.
“We have been waiting for seven years for a reform of the third cycle of studies, necessary for the attractiveness of the sector. At the same time, we have been waiting for four months for the opening of conventional negotiations, and we have decided, students and pharmacists, to support each other,” Philippe Besset, president of the FSPF, the leading pharmacists’ union, explained to AFP.
“The government does not question the interest of these subjects, but it procrastinates and it becomes unbearable”
he added.
For the moment, the unions are not calling for a strike or to close pharmacies
but to join the processions and make this mobilization visible, in particular by means of posters in pharmacies and a petition.
The poster represents the lowered curtain of a pharmacy to warn of their economic difficulties and the risk of medical desertification, continued Mr. Besset, assuring that
“25 pharmacies” have been closing every month since the start of the year and France has lost 4,000 pharmacies from 2007 to 2023, down to 20,000 pharmacies today.
As part of conventional negotiations, between Health Insurance and pharmacists – who according to the profession are slow to open -,
the FSPF is demanding an additional billion euros for the upcoming budget to be able to increase salaries, in the wake of inflation.
The students want to see the third cycle reform “advance”
which should provide them with more attractive study conditions, with improved internship compensation, transport or accommodation in medical deserts.
According to Anepf,
in two years, nearly 1,500 places (1,027 in 2022 and 471 in 2023) remained vacant for entry into pharmacy studies
at the end of the first more general year of health studies.
Without reaction from the government, ”
the movement will harden”
warns the president of the USPO, Pierre-Olivier Variot.
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