business & economy

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Extra update:
Government refuses to talk about wages, doctors extend strike

As these words were written, most of the nation's public sector doctors were threatening a 48-hour walkout starting on November 6. The general practitioners and doctors belonging to the PRD will not strike, and as usual when there's a doctors' strike the emergency rooms remain open.

Most of the doctors and dentists in the public health care system walked off of the job in 2005 over the privatization of the Social Security Fund, and in the wake of that the Torrijos administration took legal action to depose the leader of the Seguro Social doctors' union and co-opted the leader of the nurses' union to support the privatization. The nurses then got a contract that provides that senior nurses make more money than senior doctors.

When contract negotiations got underway with the doctors, Health Minister Rosario Turner flat-out declared that it would not negotiate over pay, that there will be no more money for doctors in the 2008 budget but a small raise in 2009 might be possible. As was done with the teachers' unions in 2006, the government threatened to find sympathetic individual doctors or specialty organizations with whom to negotiate instead of with the National Medical Negotiating Committee (COMENENAL) that represents the doctors' unions and professional organizations. The government also contacted individual members of the COMENENAL bargaining committee to get them to break ranks with their colleagues.

In case of a walkout, an average of 22,000 doctor appointments and 300 elective surgeries per day would be postponed. The big fear is that the breach between the government and the doctors may widen over the course of a two-day strike and that the job action might then be extended.

That possibility is out there because Turner, who was director of medical services for Seguro Social before being promoted to health minister, is saying that doctors must improve the quality of their medical care before any raise can be considered. But Turner was part of a Seguro Social management that ignored doctors, nurses and pharmacists' warnings that something was awry and that there was a sudden rash of unexpected deaths and illnesses. The nation's top medical officials sat on that information for more than two months until it leaked to the press, and now prosecutors are saying that the death toll resulting from the poisoned cough syrup problem they covered up is probably more than 700. Turner was also part of a Seguro Social management that has regularly run out of medications for patients with such chronic maladies as hemophilia, kidney problems and AIDS. Now the argument isn't just about pay, but also about being insulted.

A doctors' strike will be politically unpopular, and maybe the Torrijos administration thinks that it can break COMENENAL like it defeated the teacher unions' Teachers' Action Front (FAM). 

The president, however, is not going to find any substantial supply of strikebreakers. Moreover, unlike the teachers who depend more or less entirely on their paychecks, most public health care doctors and dentists have private practices on the side and more savings than teachers do, so economic pressures are not so easy to apply. 

Anything might happen, but look for the government to blink and offer the doctors some sort of raise in 2008. If it does that, or if the walkout turns into a prolonged and bitter strike, look for Turner to depart in the next Cabinet shuffle.

Extra update:
Government refuses to talk about wages, doctors extend strike

Also in this section:
Urban development rules and practices an increasingly potent political issue
Doctors talking strike action
He always wanted a bank of his own

Is Amway the Panamanian way?
The Panama News readership up
Business & Economy Briefs