Since this Monday, Andalusia faces an indefinite strike by the lawyers of the Andalusian Health Service (SAS), the body of public officials of the Board with the greatest workload, since the SAS is one of the main hiring areas and the one that generates more proceedings before justice. This is the first strike of lawyers from the Administration that is called in Spain and with it a new front is opened for the Ministry of Health, which continues to deal with the collapse in primary care while trying to stop the overflow on the lists of wait with concerts hand in hand with private healthcare.
“We want to dignify our profession,” a spokesperson for the strike committee of the SAS legal body tells this newspaper, made up of 42 professionals throughout the community who have joined the Administration after passing an opposition. She explains that the organizational structure by which they are governed dates back to a 2005 decree and is “obsolete.” Since 2020, they have been negotiating with the Andalusian Government for a new decree that updates that organization and improves its economic remuneration, but to date they have only received “promises” from the Executive led by Juan Manuel Moreno that have not materialized in anything. Last June, the lawyers met with the Ministry of Health and the management of the SAS, and were assured that an item would be enabled in the 2024 Budget to approve the new decree. None of this was included in the law that approved the regional accounts and the amendment to include it that Health committed to did not materialize either. “We have a lot of wear and tear, it has been a disappointment,” adds the spokesperson.
“We are working in precarious conditions due to lack of personnel and low pay. We are a highly specialized body and we are witnessing a flight of colleagues who are required to fill other positions and positions in other departments," explains the lawyer, who draws attention to the unusual situation that occurs in Andalusia, where there is a body of lawyers from the Board and another of lawyers from the SAS, who earn a lower salary.
The indefinite strike, which occupies the entire working day, will paralyze the future of public tenders, procedures where its intervention and advice are mandatory, the management of European funds and all judicial processes in which the SAS is involved. “The SAS is the entity that generates the most contracts and the most lawsuits. With the strike, all these processes will remain on
standby
and it will not be possible to go to the hiring tables,” warns the lawyer consulted. ALAS, the association that represents SAS lawyers, is compiling information from all the legal offices in Andalusia to provide specific data on the volume of cases they have to deal with in court, but the spokesperson for the strike committee points out by way of For example, in the central services of Seville each of the colleagues can attend trials three or four times a day. “A week we can go to 20 lawsuits,” she says. “We prepare them in the afternoons and on weekends,” she notes.
Their precarious situation has worsened, they highlight, since on January 1 the SAS assumed control of the five public health agencies and the Health Emergency Center. The strike committee emphasizes that at no time was the department foreseen that this integration would considerably increase its already high volume of work, nor was there any attempt to encourage lawyers for the new responsibilities they had to assume, nor to adapt its structure or their working conditions.
“In the memory of the decree, a budget of 800,000 euros is allocated to us, a ridiculous amount considering that if we win a property liability lawsuit we save the SAS that amount,” emphasizes the spokesperson for the strike committee. From ALAS, they also highlight how the budget allocated to Health amounts to 14,246 million (30% of the total Andalusian public accounts) and not a single euro is allocated to improving the legal assistance of the SAS, a service that is also essential for guarantee quality assistance for citizens.
“The abandonment of the SAS legal services negatively affects Andalusian public health, which is progressively suffering from a degeneration in its operation, a situation of collapse and overflow that is worrying not only in the provision of care, but also in the of decisions and in the management and implementation of effective health policy actions, for which it is mandatory by law to have solvent legal services," warn the strike committee, which also draws attention to how its activity is essential to address the interests of public health users and health professionals.
The unions that represent these professionals support the demands of the SAS lawyers, who, among the pressure measures they have adopted in recent months to try to force the approval of this decree, have decided not to represent the doctors in those attacks. that are not physical. “These lawyers are a fundamental part of avoiding problematic situations that delay procedures, lengthen adjudication processes unnecessarily... and once again expose the department with its constant contempt for anyone who tries to improve their conditions to provide a better service, This attitude is becoming a trademark of the house,” says Antonio Macías, head of Health at UGT Andalucía.
From the Andalusian Medical Union, its president, Rafael Ojeda, places emphasis on defending attacks against health professionals. “There are very good words from the ministry regarding this problem, which has returned to pre-pandemic figures and is not fixed, but this situation demonstrates the lack of will in our defense. If it existed, more would be invested in legal services," he points out and recalls how his organization is demanding "consistent legal action by the SAS in matters of aggression and that it delve into aspects such as the financial responsibility of the aggressors to deal with to deter these behaviors.”
Last Monday the Ministry of Health met with the representatives of the SAS lawyers to try to abort the strike, but their proposal, according to the spokesperson consulted, “is empty of content and means returning to the beginning of what we had been negotiating.” for five years." The strike, they warn, will have a massive following.