Some 13,000 administrative workers and support staff from 30 government hospitals across the country are threatening to strike next month if no agreement is reached between the Finance Ministry and the Histadrut over 200 positions that are meant to expire this month.
During the height of the coronavirus pandemic, government hospitals were allowed to recruit some 200 necessary workers to help support their establishments. These include cleaning, maintenance and food staff, for example, and also receptionists and other administrative assistants.
“The burden on the existing workers harms the health of the patients being treated in these hospitals,” said Eli Badash, head of the union for public hospital workers of the Histadrut. “No patient can receive quality and safe medical care without food and cleaning staff. Hospitals cannot operate with working operating rooms, coronavirus wards or emergency departments... The current staff is collapsing from working under such unreasonable conditions.”
He said that even with the 200 additional staff, there is a deficit of 1,000 employees that the hospitals require to run in the most optimal way.
The union said that it will go on strike beginning July 13 if a solution is not reached to keep the new staff and to improve the conditions of the workers, many of whom are working at more than full-time and seven days a week.
“We are going to fight after years of procrastination and feet dragging,” Badash said.
Also under discussion is a decision made 30 years ago that has never come to fruition that these workers would receive equal salaries to those employed by the health funds. Today, government workers receive substantially less.
Among the hospitals whose workers will strike are Rambam, Galilee, Hillel Yaffe and Shamir Medical Center, as well as many mental health, rehabilitation and geriatric hospitals.
“Hospitals have grown, departments and even whole buildings were added, but the manpower to clean, transport patients, feed workers and patients, admit patients was not thought of,” Badash said. “Today we say enough!”
On Monday, Hadassah-University Medical Center and other public hospitals petitioned the High Court to rectify a situation that has placed many of the hospitals in debt.
In Israel there is usually an annual Budget Law accompanied by an "Arrangements Law.”
Accounting practices and reimbursement rules, including a reimbursement cap, between the health funds and hospitals are set by this law, which was last updated based on 2013-2014 data. Due to the fact that during the past three years no Budget Law was legislated, the system continues to use the old law.
Hadassah’s lawsuit in the High Court says that the "controls price” order that is signed by the ministers of health and finance and published listing the maximum prices for health services, based on the cost calculations of both ministries, is not respected. That’s because the Arrangements Law forces hospitals to charge 20% less than the normative prices that were set by the order, causing harm to all hospitals.
Government and health fund hospitals are directly compensated by the government and the funds that own them, but Hadassah and all the other public hospitals are not, causing budget deficits and cash flow disaster.
“It is not possible that the public [in Jerusalem] will receive worse treatment because the law discriminates,” Hadassah head Prof. Zeev Rotstein said.
The court heard the case on Monday and aligned with the hospitals.
“Clearly there is a problem here,” Justice Isaac Amit said in a statement. “There is a mechanism here that causes the hospital system to be in debt.”
On Tuesday, the court sent a letter to the public hospitals, health funds and the government asking that a roundtable be convened to discuss the issue. In addition, the court mandated that the Health and Finance ministries register a new budget and new pricing model by the end of the summer.