Staffing levels, Spain, Europe

The health and social service federations - CCOO-Sanidad and FeSP-UGT - are planning to mobilise workers in the care sector in March to put pressure on employers to negotiate a collective agreement. The unions will organise protests outside the head offices of the main companies in the sector highlighting the problems in relation to low pay, health and safety and inadequate staffing that face the 250,000 overwhelmingly women workers. The unions are also calling on the government to tackle underfunding of services and to ensure decent working conditions through procurement.

The CCOO-Sanidad health service union has repeated its call on the government to change the protocol on discharging health workers from treatment for COVID-19 and returning to work. The union argues that the procedure should be no different to that applying to other workers and that it is essential to ensure that health workers have completely recovered from infection. It warns that pressure to get health staff back to work has contributed to the 19400 health worker infections and 13 deaths. The federation has called for medical students in the final year of their studies to be called up to

The Sanidad-CCOO and FeSP-UGT public service federations have called for a range of actions in the elder care sector in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. Both federations were already campaigning to secure better pay and conditions for the workforce, 90% of which are women. They both argue that the impact of the pandemic has further exposed the fundamental problems of low pay, inadequate staffing, stress, excessive workloads. These have been compounded by the lack of personal protective equipment and inadequate testing which have exposed both workers and service users to the virus. Key union

Workers in the SEPE public employment services are set to take two days of strike action in March to demand urgent action to address understaffing and overwork. The workers are represented by the FAC-USO public service union which has written to the Minister of Labour warning of the exhaustion faced by staff who have faced the massive increase in work over the past year in dealing with additional benefit payments and processes related to ERTE company restructuring schemes. So far, the ministry has acknowledged the problem of staffing but has not proposed a concrete solution. The union

A new study of the impact of the pandemic in social care in eight countries reveals the problems faced by social care workers and the extent to which trade union action has helped to address issues around personal protective equipment (PPE), sick pay, working time and understaffing. There has been a shortage of PPE in all countries, but it was only in Sweden that a trade union had to take legal action for its members' right to use personal protective equipment. Increased overtime was a challenge in all countries but with split shifts being a particular problem in Sweden. The pandemic exposed

A new report from the Eurofound research agency analyses the extent of labour shortages across Europe and some of the measures being taken to address them. One of the main sectors of interest is health and social care and the report highlights the risks posed by such shortages to the viability of high-quality care provision. These were seen as particularly acute in Germany and in the Nordic countries, where shortages of skilled staff have led to long waiting times for patients. They also mean high workloads for professionals, ultimately contributing to higher turnover rates and reducing the

Five health unions (CCOO, SATSE, ELA, LAB and UGT) are continuing to work together in a long-running campaign to secure increased funding for primary care in the Basque region. Their latest initiative involves demonstrations at health centres right across the region on 22 December. The unions are calling for action on staffing with the creation of 1000 new posts, the transfer of thousands of temporary workers to permanent contracts and an end to excessive use of temporary hiring. The unions are also calling on other campaign groups to join the protests.

On 22 March trade unions, including FSS-CCOO and FeSP-UGT, will begin a joint campaign of mobilization of staff at the Labour and Social Security Inspectorate. It aims to put pressure on the government to abide by a collective agreement that was signed last year. The unions want action to address staff and material shortages that are having a major impact on service delivery. It argues that that the government needs to recognise the efforts made by staff in recent years to maintain the service and the fact that many workers are facing burnout. Demonstrations are planned across the country on

The debate over a shorter working week continues next month with a hybrid conference on 20-21 October – “A 4-day week in Europe: how to get real working time reduction”. Organised by the European Network for the Fair Sharing of Working Time, the conference will cover practical examples of working time reduction in both public and private sectors, including the major move to a shorter working week in Iceland. There will also be contributions from trade unionists from Switzerland and France. Another conference supported by the European Trade Union Institute will focus on the impact of labour

The public service federations in the UGT and CCOO confederations welcome the fact that their demands for public sector pay negotiations have been agreed by the government. The unions want a multiannual agreement that allows for the maintenance of purchasing power and, in particular, an increase this year on top of the 2% pay increase imposed by the government. CCOO and UGT want to see action to correct the long-term decline in purchasing power across the public sector, with foreign service personnel, for example not seeing an increase for 14 years. The unions want to ensure that the new

The European Confederation of Trade Unions (ETUC) is calling on employers to offer better-paid jobs to end damaging labour shortages across Europe. An analysis of job vacancy rates and wages in 22 EU countries by the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) reveals that industries with the worst labour shortages pay 9% less on average than sectors where it’s easier to recruit. The ETUC argues that lack of skills is often seen as the main problem, but the new analysis suggests that low pay is one of the main drivers of labour shortages. The ETUI research found that across the EU, the industries

The Eurofound research agency has published a policy brief which underlines the need to tackle poor job quality among a range of essential occupations, including in the health and care, food systems, cleaning and refuse, transport and protective services sectors, along with manual workers in general. The report argues that these workers’ health and well-being were at risk during the COVID-19 pandemic and continue to be post-pandemic contributing to the labour shortages that persist in these sectors. The policy brief says that critical occupations facing staff shortages, such as jobs in health