The Independent Doctors’ Union (SIM) has welcomed the interim agreement reached with the resigning government that will benefit all doctors in the National Health Service (SNS) with pay rises.
“The SIM was pleased to receive confirmation from the government that the SIM’s interim agreement will benefit all doctors in the NHS, including those covered by the non-unionized individual employment contract (CIT) regime and members of the National Federation of Doctors (Fnam), raising doctors’ salary increases from 3% (civil service) to 15% in 2024,” says a press release.
In the note entitled “Salary increases will be for all doctors”, the SIM states that this is an interim agreement with the outgoing government, which “anticipated a partial understanding in favor of doctors some seven to nine months before the new government could sit down at the negotiating table” with the unions.
The SIM took the opportunity to send a “Christmas thank you to the Fnam for having made the right choice not to oppose the SIM agreement being applied to all doctors, including its members”.
On Friday, the government clarified that the pay rises agreed with the SIM also cover Fnam union members and non-union members with Individual Employment Contracts.
In a statement, the Ministry of Health mentioned that the new pay scale, with effect from January, “will be directly applied to all doctors unionized with the SIM and all doctors under a Public Employment Contract,” and will be extended to non-unionized doctors under a CIT and to doctors under a CIT unionized with Fnam.
The government said that all doctors, whether unionized or not, “should benefit” from the “significant increase” in salaries, based on the principle of “equal work, equal pay”.
The decree enshrining the pay rises for NHS doctors (agreed with the SIM at the end of November, but then rejected by the Fnam) was promulgated on Thursday by the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. The increases range from 10.9% to 14.6%.
The agreement determining pay rises for NHS doctors was reached after more than a year of negotiations marked by strikes.
