The nurses’ strike would spread to the emergency unit at Mater Dei Hospital if demands for better food continued to be ignored, the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses warned on Wednesday.
The union on Tuesday directed nurses not to accompany patients into the operating theatre.
“This has been an ongoing saga for a very long time. We didn’t just wake up and decide to disrupt operations so irresponsibly. But nurses are already dealing with very tough work conditions and we will not give up,” union president Paul Pace said.
While operations were disrupted on Tuesday, they took place as usual on Wednesday with Mr Pace laying the blame on strikebreakers.
Nurses were hired from private contractors to fill in the gaps, he said, adding that a number of them were not skilled to do the work they were hired for.
“They brought in strikebreakers today (Wednesday). They hired nurses from private contractors that had never worked at Mater Dei, some of them with no experience with surgical patients,” Mr Pace said.
Mater Dei CEO Ivan Falzon, however, disputed this, claiming he had only subcontracted two nurses on Wednesday and this was according to normal procedures.
Mr Falzon, who believes the actions in place are disproportionate to the issue at hand, insisted he was proud of his employees who had put their duty towards their patients first and chose not to strike.
“The patient, our health service, should never end up as a bargaining chip during discussions or disagreements. We should raise the level of our industrial relations and leave practices of yesteryear behind. In this climate there are no winners but only losers,” Mr Falzon said.
Until Wednesday, the two parties had not come to an agreement with Mr Falzon saying that he would continue to engage with stakeholders to find a solution that would “fit within existing operational frameworks.”
Mr Falzon told Times of Malta the hospital spent €4 per person on food available at the staff canteen.
Mr Pace said that MUMN was being criticised by its members for not doing anything about the poor quality of food they were given at the hospital canteen, which had been ongoing for a long time.
He said the nurses were asking that they should be allowed to opt for a €5 food allowance rather than be given a free meal. This would buy them a snack not lunch, Mr Pace noted, however, it could incentivise the caterers to improve the quality of the meals if nurses were no longer eating at the canteen.
Asked whether the quality of the food changed with the shift in caterers in 2016, Mr Pace replied that “with the previous caterer it was bad but now it’s inedible”.
It had become common practice for doctors to order take away food through apps, he added.
Furthermore, people were under the impression that the hospital was doing its employees a favour by providing them with free food. However, Mr Pace remarked, it was standard procedure in developed countries to provide both doctors and nurses who worked very long shifts with free meals.
Contacted by Times of Malta for comments, Corinthia Caterers said: “The company is currently in discussions with the management of Mater Dei in order to immediately find solutions to the current situation.”