Public sector doctors are starting a three-day national strike today to force the government to present a concrete proposal to revise the salary scale, which the Minister of Health promised on Monday to send to the unions.
Convened by the Independent Union of Doctors (SIM), the stoppage takes place simultaneously with a strike on overtime work, started on Monday by family doctors, lasting a month, and also promoted by the same union structure.
A new negotiation meeting between the government and the unions is scheduled for Friday.
On Friday, at the end of a negotiating meeting, SIM secretary general Jorge Roque da Cunha accused the Health Ministry of “not presenting the negotiating documents”, stating that he would only go to the next meeting with the Ministry if he received the government’s proposals in advance.
On the eve of the first day of the national strike, which ends on Thursday, the Minister of Health, Manuel Pizarro, assured that he would present a proposal to revise the salary grid to doctors and regretted the “excessive criticism” that there has been about the way the negotiations have been going, which began in 2022 with the predecessor minister Marta Temido, but which have so far resulted in no agreement between the parties.
At the discussion stage of the negotiating protocol, in July 2022, the government and unions agreed to include the salary scale for doctors in the National Health Service in the negotiations