"The strike is essential to require the government to present a career proposal that meets the expectations of nurses, but, more than that, to meet the commitments that were made by the government and the Ministry of Health in the agreed negotiating guidelines, which aimed precisely to determine within what framework the assessment of the nursing career would be made," Guadalupe Simões, leader of the SEP nurses’ union told Lusa News Agency.

Starting at 8am, Wednesday’s strike is to be exclusively in hospitals (surgical wings and out-patient surgery) while on Thursday it is to take place in all public sector health institutions where nurses are in service, according to the strike notice.

The national action is to be repeated on 16, 17, 18 and 19 of October, the day when a demonstration is scheduled in front of the Ministry of Health in Lisbon to demand that the government meet commitments made during last year’s negotiating process.

The unions are demanding a review of nursing careers, the definition of conditions of access to employment categories, the salary scale, the principles of the system for performance assessment, the rules for and organisation of working time, and the conditions and criteria applicable to employment competitions.

They claim, among other matters, that the special nursing career is applicable to all public and National Health Service (SNS) institutions and to all nurses who work in them, independent of the type of employment contract they have. They are also demanding clear conditions of access to voluntary retirement for nurses and that they be entitled to full pension after 35 years of service once they are at least 57 years old; this is the unions’ starting position in the negotiations.

The unions called a strike on 20 and 21 September for the same reasons; according them, participation by nurses was at 80.4%.

The strike has been called by the SEP, Madeira’s SERAM, SINDEPOR and ASPE.