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When a doctor in the lab earns less than a babysitter, it is impossible to fight Corona
In recent decades, the status of laboratory workers in Israel has been eroded to the limit. Despite warnings about the escape of the employed into the private market due to the insulting wage, the corona crisis has gripped the system with its pants down when it is in collapse
Tags- Corona virus
- Laboratories
Dr. Yifat Alkalay
Friday, August 28, 2020, 9 p.m.- Share on Facebook
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Until the 1980s, the salaries of laboratory workers in the country were linked to the doctors' salaries table. No one knows how to tell when it changed and why. "I was a doctor in the Soviet Union," a lab worker told me this week. There, they study medicine in a track at the end of which some go to a clinical internship, and some to a laboratory internship. "We worked shoulder to shoulder, with a clear goal, to diagnose and treat patients."
It is impossible to define the meaning of the profession of medical laboratory, without reference to the diagnostic tools without which the doctor in the clinic is completely blind. Once the differential diagnosis has been made, he will work to prove it by laboratory tests, and will use their results to tailor treatment.
The world of testing has evolved over time. In the past they used to taste the urine to diagnose diabetes, since the profession developed. In recent decades, the most advanced technologies have been assimilated, enabling the diagnosis of diseases with the help of the detection of thousands of biological signs, and in many cases a reduction to the level of the genetic load and genes of each patient. These are processes, leading to a new era of personalized medicine.
Paradoxically, in parallel with the tremendous development of professional skills, the status of the laboratory worker in Israel has eroded to the limit. Evidently, the last wage agreement signed with this wounded and bleeding sector is from 1995.
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The corona crisis gripped the system with the pants down. Corona Laboratory in Or Yehuda (Photo: Reuven Castro)
In the 1990s, many workers from the former Soviet Union were absorbed into the health system. Many of them came to the labs and brought with them extensive experience and extensive education. At the same time, as in many other health professions, more women turned to learning the profession. Today, about 85% of lab workers are women. Are the large number of new immigrants and the high percentage of women the reasons for abandoning the profession?
It's hard to believe, but the starting hourly wage for laboratory workers with a bachelor's degree is only NIS 31. The hourly wage for novice workers with a doctorate (third degree) is NIS 37, less than the hourly wage paid for a babysitter. Laboratory workers with a doctorate and 20 years of experience will reach a maximum salary of NIS 54 per hour, and this will remain the case until retirement age. Clearly unreasonable.
Over half of the workers have crossed the age of 50, and about 30% of the workers have crossed the age of 60. On the other hand, young people do not come to work in public laboratories at such an insulting wage. This means that within five years, public laboratories will collapse. There is no other way to describe the situation.
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Employees are looking for their way into the private market. Private laboratory in Petah Tikva (Photo: Elad Malka)
The current corona crisis has gripped the system with the pants down. After years of dragging their feet, and repeated warnings about the situation, reality exploded in everyone’s faces.
The Ministry of Health itself wrote a scathing document in 2016, describing exactly what we see today: a collapse, a lack of emergency preparedness, a lack of horizons for the profession. As a result of that document, the State Comptroller added his own serious report and warned of the danger of a tangible collapse.
The workers have reached the end. Corona Laboratory in Tel Aviv (Photo: Yossi Zellinger, Flash 90)
What has been done in the four years since? anything. In every crisis find a local band-aid, which will allow you to move on and forget about the problem. The plaster on duty is the opening of private laboratories for corona testing. Four billion shekels were invested in private laboratories instead of investing a tenth of the amount in correcting the situation in public laboratories for generations to come.
And the result? Public laboratory workers are currently looking for their way out to the private market, where they are offered a starting salary of 60 to 120 shekels per hour. There is an actual privatization of health here. But unlike other business areas, there are many examples around the world that privatization in medicine, and the promotion of a private medical system, are detrimental to public health in the long run. Therefore, the interest in preserving public medicine is critical.
After countless discussions and years of negotiations on the future of the profession, lab workers have now come to the end, and declared a strike, starting August 30th. A justified strike, which probably should have happened a long time ago.
Dr. Yifat Alkalai is one of the leaders in the struggle of the laboratory workers, the director of the Clinical Immunology Laboratory at Tel Aviv Medical Center.
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