It is surprising that so few have commented on the implications of the ongoing strike by nursing aides, health assistants and care workers, ordered by the General Workers Union over the past week.
Admittedly, this sector has long complained of the poor working conditions we have come to associate with the public healthcare in Malta: insufficient financial remuneration; long working hours in overcrowded (and at times dangerous) environments, and so on. As in the case of similar complaints levelled by the medical and nursing sectors through their respective unions, MAM and MUMN, these have traditionally fallen on deaf ears. It seems that for the past 15 years, government has set its priorities solely on the completion of Mater Dei hospital to the exclusion of all other factors related to health… and even here, this obsession with a new, state-of-the-art hospital has concentrated almost exclusively on infrastructural aspects – the building, the equipment, the air-conditioning, etc. – without paying sufficient attention to the altogether more crucial human resources.
So in a sense it is understandable that nursing aides and health assistants would feel that the only way to get the attention they feel they deserve is by taking drastic action. The pity, however, is that the drastic action they chose to take this week will not affect the government. Quite the contrary: it is the elderly and the infirm, the patients currently residing at St Vincent De Paule residents for the elderly, as well as those at Sir Paul Boffa hospital and elsewhere, who are suffering as a result.
Incredibly, the union representing non-medical health workers ordered a strike without apparently making any alternative accommodation for the benefit of those patients who would be affected most… patients, it must be said, who are entirely blameless in the plight of hospital workers. It therefore borders on the criminal to allow such vulnerable elements of our society to bear the full brunt of the union’s surprisingly uncharitable industrial action. And let us not forget that the “full brunt” in this instance involves elderly or infirm patients left in their hospital beds without being washed or changed. This is not just a gross dereliction of duty; it is also an open affront to human dignity.
The GWU has so far justified its actions as follows: “It is inevitable that someone is hit by industrial action.” Coming from a trade union which claims to champion the underdog, the attitude is altogether too similar to former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s notorious “collateral damage” neologism for comfort. In the aggressive pursuit of its agenda, the GWU appears to have forgotten its own vocation as guardians of the downtrodden in the face of social injustice.
Hence the surprising lack of general condemnation, both in the press – although naturally one must bear in mind media ownership issues here – but more so by government itself. Faced with this crisis, Health Minister Louis Deguara broke an age-old silence to make an impassioned appeal to “relatives of the patients” to help. The minister’s concerns are understandable, but his appeal is hopelessly misplaced. Worse, it betrays a lack of basic understanding of the health sector’s most intrinsic problems: for sadly, a number of the patients concerned find themselves in hospital precisely because their own families have placed them there to begin with… either because they lack the resources to care for them properly at home, or (in some unfortunate cases) because they simply don’t care. Exactly how these family members can now be expected to chip in to support the skeleton staff is at best unclear.
Another reason to be surprised at the meekness of government’s response to the crisis is the proximity of a general election. It seems incongruous that the government should fail to take any advantage of a surprising faux-pas on the part of the General Workers’ Union, which was, and still is, utterly oblivious to the public indignation its actions would inevitably incur. How can the media refrain from criticising the present administraton for being tired and indecisive, when it seems to lack the energy to even respond to such a glaring political opportunity?
But by far the most worrying implication of this development is its timing. There can be little doubt that the General Workers’ Union is fully aware of the disruption this strike will have on the migration process to Mater Dei. But more than just derail the process, the industrial action has also illustrated the basic flaw with Malta’s entire attitude towards its increasingly unsustainable healthcare system. For it is now apparent that once fully functional, Mater Dei Hospital will carry over all the bad practices that had made its predecessor such an onerous place to work (or, worse, to be treated). It is clear that no steps have been taken to address the human resources problems that had dogged St Luke’s; just as it is clear that the system shake-up our healthcare service so thoroughly needs will not be provided simply by adding air-conditioning and satellite TV in every ward. It is the human element that must be addressed: not just nursing shortages and working conditions, but also the skewed administrative set-up that lies at the heart of the malaise currently gripping the entire sector.
If any good comes of this strike at all, it may well be that it will finally open the government’s eyes to the real problems in Malta’s hospitals. Naturally, however, this will be but cold comfort to the many, many patients who are suffering unduly on account of this unreasonable course of action.