Doctors' contract: additional services, assignments and hours postponed to the next negotiation

Exactly one week after that of the Central Functions Area, the signing of the Pre-agreement for the Health Area also arrived, concerning 137,370 executives of physicians, dentists, veterinarians, biologists, chemists, physicists, pharmacists, psychologists, and executives of the nursing and technical-health professions. In this case, what had been hypothesised by the Guideline Act of 17 September last, where it hoped for a 'rapid closure' of the contract in order to then start, again rapidly, the negotiation for the three-year period 2025-2027, has taken place.

In a very few meetings - 1, 15 and 27 October and 10 and 18 November - an agreement was reached and, after the Comparto and the PTA management, therefore, even the healthcare managers finally obtained the renewal that - I will always point this out, to the point of boredom - refers to the three-year period 2022-2024, which is more than a year overdue when the final signature will arrive. This contract, too, was not signed by the CGIL, which was joined by the FASSID, and the signatory acronyms turn out to be six and their corresponding confederations, with a representativity percentage of 76.15%.

The official communiqué appeared on ARAN's website, stating that 'the hypothesis characterises us mainly for the significant economic increases': now, everyone sees it from their own point of view, but the 'sensitive' increases are those of all other public employees, that is, 5.78 % of the 2021 payroll, considered by some to be completely unsatisfactory - according to one thesis, half, according to another, a third - compared to the inflation of the corresponding period. It was evidently decided to proceed with a sort of bridge-contract that would put the meagre increases provided for by law into the pay envelope so as not to further damage the purchasing power of salaries, losing months in extremely complex negotiations, as in the past. The objective, in short, was to immediately open negotiations for the next three-year period 2025-2027 which, today, is already a third of the way through.

All the regulatory aspects are absent, either from maintenance of the previous contract, or of intervening topicality. In particular, the guidelines of the Sector Committee concerning the system of management appointments (paragraph 3 of the Guideline Act), working hours (4), stand-by duty (5), and additional services (7) have been set aside for the next contract. With regard to holidays and holidays (6) and the reconstitution of the employment relationship (8), a few minor changes do not change the general structure, but what is contained in paragraph 12 of Article 9 is unbelievable in its stubborn insistence on situations that have now completely changed. It is certainly not some intangible and essentially useless passages that characterise the renewal as a 'real' collective agreement. Reference is made above all to the question of working time, which must necessarily be taken up in the next contract. The initialled text, for the obvious reasons mentioned above, is very meagre and contains only 22 articles, without annexes or tables, and five joint declarations. Among the common provisions, there are a number of interventions that had already been defined in the other two contracts, such as union prerogatives, disposal of residual leave or legal aid in the event of aggression.

Now, the text of the Ipotesi di CCNL will go to the Sector Committee, to the MEF, to the Council of Ministers and, finally, to the united sections of the Court of Auditors, which must express, respectively, a favourable opinion on the text of the Ipotesi, possible observations and certification on the compatibility of costs, procedures that hopefully will not last 116 days, as in 2024, which are not like the 197 in the same year for PTA management, but are in any case a stretch with respect to what is prescribed by law (art. 47, paragraphs 4 and 5, of Legislative Decree 165/2001).