Helsinki and Uusimaa Hospital District plan to hire private services
Finnish public hospitals are making preparations for coping with the planned mass resignations of care personnel affiliated with the Union of Health and Social Care Professionals (Tehy).
On Tuesday, Tehy announced that it was planning to have its members resign en masse as a way of promoting their pay demands.
Under the law, in the event of a strike, a certain number of nurses can be required to stay at work to maintain basic services. Under a mass resignation there would be no such obligation. However, the tactic is not without risks: the management side would be under no obligation to rehire those who had resigned.
Tehy is convinced that a combination of solidarity among union members and the shortage of nurses in Finland are a sufficient guarantee that those taking part in the mass resignation action will not end up unemployed.
The Helsinki and Uusimaa Hospital District (HUS) is planning to recruit substitutes and to hire private nursing services, but officials are admitting that such moves would not be enough.
“They would be marginal measures”, said Kari Nenonen, managing director of HUS on Wednesday.
MedOne, a temp agency for medical personnel, says that it would not force its nurses to work as strike breakers. According to MedOne CEO Pertti Karjalainen, his company “respects the industrial action”.
For instance, at the Kuopio University Central Hospital, Tehy has hinted at the possibility that about 200 nurses would quit their jobs. According to head physician Jorma Penttinen, about one third of the activities of the hospital would have to to shut down in such an event.
If the stoppage begins, non-urgent surgeries will be reduced and postponed, there will be more mobility within the hospitals among staff who still are at work, and doctors and practical nurses will be doing more work.
The most crucial sectors are emergency duty, paediatrics, oncology, and maternity.
“I hope that the action is over when I come to have my baby. There might be a bit of a panic if a midwife were running around in 15 delivery rooms”, says Terhi Mutka, who is in her 35th week of pregnancy, during a checkup at the Kätilöopistio Maternity Hospital in Helsinki.
Tehy has promised to limit the mass resignations to large university hospitals and central hospitals, and will not extend to municipal health centres.
Source : Helsingin Sanomat