Sickening health sector disputes

Tuesday 6th July, 2021

The health sector trade unions have made the public as sick as a parrot. It looks as if they took turns to inflict maximum possible suffering on the hapless people dependent on free healthcare. No sooner had the nurses called off their strike than the Joint Council of Professions Supplementary to Medicine (JCPSM) struck work; the protesting union is now threatening a continuous strike. The sick are like the grass that suffers when elephants fight.

The government pretends that the JCPSM trade union action has not affected the state health institutions, at all, and it can maintain the health services without the strikers. This, it usually does during the initial stages of doctors’ and nurses’ strikes as well. But after a few days it has to swallow its pride, talk to the strikers and offer solutions. It will be compelled to have talks with the JCPSM because hospitals cannot function without paramedical personnel.

How can the government keep the state-run medical labs open without the Medical Laboratory Technologists? Hospital dispensaries cannot function without pharmacists. The services of radiologists and physiotherapists are also essential. Is the government planning to outsource laboratory tests, etc., to private hospitals owned by its cronies, who have already made a killing thanks to the current pandemic?

All public health workers perform important functions to keep the state health institutions functional, regardless of their service categories. After all, that is why they are paid by the state. The government, therefore, should not dupe itself into believing that it will be able to wear the strikers down.

It is wrong for the health workers, or other state employees for that matter, to resort to trade union action during the current health crisis. The focus of the country should be on fighting the virus. They no doubt have grievances, which should be redressed, but this certainly is not the time to strike. Likewise, the government must not provoke workers into resorting to trade union action.

It is only natural that when one category of health workers is given preferential treatment, others protest against discrimination. Pay hikes or special allowance for doctors make nurses agitate. When the nurses win their demands by flexing their trade union muscles, other health workers see red. This, we have seen all these decades, and the incumbent government should have trodden cautiously.

There are several issues that prompt the health workers to protest from time to time. They include promotions that affect the hierarchy in the health sector. These problems should be solved once and for all. No government has had the political moxie to grasp the nettle, all these years. Instead, they have tried band-aid remedies, which fail in the long-run. Some committees were appointed to sort out salary issues in the health sector some years ago; they came out with solutions that were by and large acceptable to the health workers, but the ad hoc manner in which successive governments have sought to solve trade union disputes have disturbed the salary structures. (Sri Lankan politicians have a remarkable ability to bring chaos out of order!) Thus, what is considered a solution by one trade union becomes a problem for another. This is what happened when the nurses’ demands were granted recently. Someone should have explained the situation to the President and pointed out the need to adopt a holistic approach.

The government should not drive the JCPSM to resort to extreme action. Now that the President has intervened to solve the problems faced by the government doctors and nurses, he should do likewise in respect of the JCPSM as well. Bonds of friendship between trade union bosses and the government leaders must not be the basis on which solutions should be found to workers’ problems.