With bells, whistles and banging on pots, hospital employees demand better pay. A large procession of healthcare providers from the hospital in Alkmaar therefore marched through the city and briefly occupied a roundabout to reinforce their wishes: “We are just very angry that after such a pandemic we have to fight again for a good collective agreement.”
The demonstrators gathered at the hospital yesterday afternoon, then walked to the roundabout at the Bergerhout and occupied it for fifteen minutes, reports media partner Alkmaar Central.
“The care we have to provide in hospitals is becoming increasingly complex,” explains surgery assistant Tanneke Goverse. “The workload is getting higher and higher. In addition, there is the screaming shortage of personnel, on top of the after-effects of the corona pandemic. And then we also have to deal with enormous inflation.”
According to Goverse, about four hundred hospital employees joined the protest march.
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Two weeks ago, the Dutch Association of Hospitals (NVZ) made a final offer of thirteen percent, but the unions found that offer insufficient. There seems to be no end to the impasse yet. “The NVZ must return to the negotiating table.”
Yesterday’s protest was outside working hours, Goverse emphasized earlier at NH News. The hospital will not be shut down for the time being. “Forty-five minutes walk and then we are much too nice and we just go back to the hospital,” says one of the demonstrators. “But that does show how the nurses are.”