AMSTA’s employees need our support

People working in the AMSTA healthcare and special treatment centre are fighting for your families and the future of healthcare.

As you may know, AMSTA’s employees are mobilising to ensure the quality of the services provided in the centre. During the mobilisations, they seated themselves at the Sarphatiehuis building claiming an increase of the personnel-bed quota. OSIRA health centre’s employees mobilised last year with similar demands and achieved their goal.

The workload is disproportionately big and the personnel can no longer offer the desired quality of services. Since 2012, the Dutch government has been providing AMSTA with 3,5 million euros for recruiting. But this money was never spent on the personnel. On the contrary, it was made known that it was spent on managers’ training. With the sit-in at Sarphatiehuis building, AMSTA’s employees made sure that the president of the administrative board would get into negotiations. Thus far, the negotiations have not achieved the desired results, therefore mobilisations will go on.

Ben de Valk, president of AMSTA’s administrative board, speaks to the media in deprecatory tones about the employees and launches threats against them. In an interview to De Telegraaf he claimed that due to the repeated work stoppages and the resulting negative advertising, the centre loses patients and incomes. Under attack is also the ABVAKABO FNV trade union.

During the last period, the Dutch government promotes a series of cuts, which increase the pressure upon the administrations of the healthcare centres. The personnel suffers the consequences. Bernard Wientjes, president of the Dutch Organisation of Employers is in total alignment with de Valk, openly stating that employers should not step back. It seems that Wientjes would experience a victory of the employees as a defeat. Such a victory would disrupt his plans, given that the next months are set to be a period of important developments in the central political scene.

The struggle of AMSTA’s employees is also our own struggle. Their victory will be also ours, given that:

1. Either in the short- or long-term, we will all need the right healthcare.

2. Billions are cut in the healthcare sector, a big part of which is about home care. It is estimated that these cuts will lead 100.000 healthcare employees to lose their jobs. If cuts are implemented, we will soon be paying more for less.

3. AMSTA’s administration takes abolition of home care for granted, although final decisions are still to be taken by the government. As a result, employees are already being laid off, while AMSTA’s administration should instead be trying to protect home care. On 6 April, a national mobilisation against cuts on home care will take place, organised by the ABVAKABO FNV trade union.

4. Money management within AMSTA is more and more in the hands of the administration and the bureaucracy. Employees know very well patients’ needs. They also consider unacceptable that the salaries of the administration members are higher that the salary of a minister. If AMSTA’s employees win the fight, it will be made clear that we can bring this phenomenon to an end.

5. ABVAKABO FNV trade union is under attack because it fervently defends the rights of its members and takes their will into consideration as every democratically organised trade union oughts to do. This is unaccepted by the employers. The attack jointly launched by employers’ circles and the Media in the past weeks aims at rendering illegitimate the mobilisations of the healthcare employees. In addition, it aims to turn the trade union movement into a complice in the attempt to abolish the welfare state and, by consequence, to decrease the period during which unemployment benefit is provided, make layoffs easier, impose a salary freeze on civil servants, enforce the cuts the government has decided.

For the above reasons, we kindly request you to send as many support letters as possible in the next days. We will welcome letters from working councils, trade unions, organisations but also individuals and families. Discuss this request with your colleagues and the members of your trade union and send your support letters to Martin Wijnen (see his e-mail above).

With kind regards,

Rob Marijnissen

On behalf of the healthcare employees and

the group of the Vakbondscafé Amsterdam program.