When the overtime blockade broke out at 4pm on Thursday, it meant that 4,400 nurses and other members of the Nursing Association at Sahlgrenska are no longer allowed to work overtime. The hospital management cannot say how many would have done so during the first night of the conflict, but operations are in all cases immediately rescheduled to meet the patients’ urgent need for care.
– As an employer, we must review our scheduling and prioritize having employees on site where we would otherwise find it difficult to maintain the care we are supposed to provide, says Mattias Bjarnegård, SU management’s coordinator for the blockade
Isn’t it strike breaking to move staff?
– No, we have to be careful not to violate the meaning of the blockade and cannot replace someone who would otherwise have worked overtime. But we can have planned manpower in place that can meet the needs.
Photo: Ines Sebalj/Sahlgrenska University Hospital
According to the hospital management, the ambition is that the patients should not notice the blockade at all, in the short term.
– We have tried to put the planning in place now so that we do not cut down any operations in the first instance. We have to change our working methods to some extent, but even if it is difficult to see exactly what effects it will have, we are currently investing in being able to maintain the care that we normally provide.
Then you have to ask yourself why you don’t always work in such a way that you maintain care without overtime?
– That’s a good question, and we don’t have a desire from the hospital management to use overtime either. We also want to eliminate it and give employees predictability in their work, but not everything can be planned in healthcare, says Mattias Bjarnegård.
Nicklas Modig, is elected representative for the Vårdförbundet at Sahlgrenska and represents the 4,400 who are now being taken out in conflict.
– We are doing this because the negotiations between the care association and SKR have stalled. We want better working conditions. Many of our members choose to reduce their working hours in order to be able to work. We have a lot of working hours every year, he says.
That which actually can step on their feet now at Sahlgrenska, when the employer chooses to staff up the emergency, delivery and operating departments can become tasks such as return visits and annual visits.
Should the business as a whole be hit so hard in the future that there is a risk to life and health, special rules will come into play, where the care employers can reduce the blockade after talks with the union.
– But there is a long way to go. Then we as employers must have done a lot of other things first, says the management group’s coordinator Mattias Bjarnegård.
Read more: This is why there is conflict in healthcare
