The Canary Islands Medical Union (CESM Canarias) has pointed to the Canary Islands Health Service (SCS) as responsible for the current labor conflict due to the lack of specificity in addressing their demands. The physicians' collective states they have been waiting two decades for the improvement offer that the Department of Health announced on May 28th.
According to the union's president in the Canary Islands, Éric Álvarez, the proposal announced by the SCS director, Adasat Goya, included reorganizing shifts to eliminate 24-hour on-call duties, an increase in the hourly pay for on-call shifts, and limiting the daily patient quota in Primary Care. "We find it, at the very least, incorrect to present the proposal, however vague, to the press without having communicated it to us first: we have nothing," stressed Álvarez, who stated that Goya has been announcing a firm offer for weeks that has yet to materialize.
Álvarez also refuted Goya's statements regarding the date of the demands' presentation. "We submitted our demands to the SCS on March 9th, the date we registered them with the Government of the Canary Islands," the doctor pointed out. He acknowledged that the base document has been updated to set "red lines" and to align Canary Islands' demands with progress made by doctors in other autonomous communities, as the delay in response has allowed other regions to reach agreements.
The union leader recalled the four meetings held since February with Goya, who attended the encounters alone. This leads to questioning whether Goya has the autonomy to make decisions or if the negotiation is not being taken seriously.
