EPSU signs Call to Action "Health Workers for All"

PR HW4All050515 Ethical recruit health-1 copy

On 14 October 2014, EPSU signed the Call to Action “Health Workers For All – All for Health Workers”. The Call to Action - available in eight languages (EN, FR, DE, ES, IT, PL and ROM) - is addressed to national and European decision-makers and aims to promote sustainable health care systems around the world and decent recruitment and employment conditions for health workers.

Jan Willem Goudriaan, EPSU Secretary General, underlines: "EPSU supports the objectives and requests expressed by the Call to Action. Together with our members in Europe we fight for decent working and pay conditions for all workers in health care and social services, including those that look for a job outside their country of origin or training. We demand employers to respect procedures of ethical recruitment and to ensure a good induction and a fair treatment of migrant health workers at the workplace. These aims can be supported by making full use of the EPSU-HOSPEEM Code of Conduct on Ethical Recruitment signed in 2008." It aims at safeguarding fair and transparent contracting and training, equal treatment and non-discrimination, the promotion of recruitment agencies with demonstrated good track record and health workers’ rights to join and be active in trade unions. In 2012 EPSU and HOSPEEM issued a report evaluating the use and impact of the code of conduct.

EPSU has contributed to the activities of the project partners, coordinated by WEMOS, over the last years. The project helped to promote the Code of Conduct on Ethical Cross-Border Recruitment adopted by the EU-level social partners in the hospital sector. Colleagues of EPSU affiliates ver.di, FNV Zorg & Welzijn, Sanitas and RCN collaborated with the national project partners in Germany, The Netherlands, Romania and the United Kingdom. Country reports and case studies elaborated in the framework of the project, including in the case of Spain, help highlighting the role of trade unions for fair recruitment and induction policies and their requests in support of decent working and pay conditions for migrant health and social care workers.

On 5 May 2015, WEMOS, the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) and EPSU had co-organised event in the European Parliament on cross-border health worker migration to also gather support for the Call to Action. At this event representatives from EPSU affiliates from Germany and Romania underlined the fundamental right of freedom of movement of workers across Europe. They, however, also advocated for a better regulation of the authorisation of recruitment companies and a monitoring of their activities along the lines of the WHO and EPSU-HOSPEEM Codes of Conduct. The underlined the need of financial support to countries affected by out-migration, including for establishing registers of mobility / information systems, continuous professional development, better education infrastructures and increased professional qualifications.

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