Hadassah doctors strike over management’s ‘unilateral action’

Doctors are protesting against “unilateral changes by management” and the financial troubles that have hounded HMO for almost a year.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
AN ISRAELI doctor 370 (photo credit: Baz Ratner/Reuters)
AN ISRAELI doctor 370
(photo credit: Baz Ratner/Reuters)
The doctors on the Ein Kerem and Mount Scopus campuses of the Hadassah University Medical Center launched sanctions on Tuesday, holding workers’ assemblies and establishing a reduced Shabbat schedule until further notice.
The doctors, who like all employees are to receive only half of their salaries on pay day, are protesting against “unilateral changes by management” and the financial troubles that have hounded Hadassah Medical Organization for almost a year.
The doctors’ works committees are to go on Wednesday to Tel Aviv to meet with Histadrut labor federation official Avi Nissenkorn to discuss the issues. Nissenkorn said that HMO management was “to blame for leading relations with the doctors to a dead end. I call on management to show responsibility and halt immediately the unilateral actions so as not to worsen damage caused to the hospitals, their employees and all patients.”
HMO has a deficit of more than NIS 1.3 billion and is negotiating, so far fruitlessly, with the government on being bailed out for seven months.
The spokeswoman for HMO director- general Avigdor Kaplan said that management has worked “night and day to implement a recovery program to save the medical centers” and been negotiating with various factors and works committees of the physicians, nurses and maintenance and administrative staff.”
Even though the doctors’ and nurses’ works committees have advanced greatly in negotiations, she continued, “it is still not enough to implement a program that will preserve HMO as a leader in medicine, services and research.
Despite the sanctions, management will make any effort to reach understandings with government officials and works committees to carry out a recovery agreement that would restore the institution to its honorable course.”