Switzerland, Providence Hospital: the scope of a struggle by OSL-Vaud (fr)

An exemplary strike has been conducted since November 2012 by employ?.es Hospital 
Providence will face Group GSMN to exclude CTC 21 (collective labor agreement of the 
Health Sector of the canton of Neuch?tel). Indeed, this group of private clinics intends 
to purchase the facility at this condition. To further increase their windfall profits, 
GSMN attacks the social employ?.es and intends to apply its own rules regarding working 
conditions and pay. ---- This is symptomatic of the current policy of Health set up by the 
federal and cantonal authorities to favor private groups. Accepting that two different 
frameworks exist as with the staff of the health, play the game benefits "best cost" whose 
fate necessarily private winner, who underpay their little employ?.es and stick to a 
framework dehumanizing work.


It thus opposes public service activity related to the common good and social needs in a 
private activity that has no other purpose than the value of capital and the profit motive.

Health is not a commodity

Struggle employ?.es Hospital Providence for their rights is a first step towards the 
emancipation of salari?.es in general. It should also add a reflection on the movements 
and forces that are active in the field of Health. The challenge lies in the definition we 
must give Health gains for the people it represents and how it is an essential element of 
the society to which we aspire.

The commodification of health guided by logic alone cost and performance is a fact. 
Legislative changes put into effect in recent years, under the sway of lobbyists private 
insurance and pharmaceutical groups have attacked the brunt of our most basic rights such 
as the right to be cared for properly. Putting in competing public service institutions 
and private groups, we actually pay for capitalist profits generated unduly employ?.es and 
patient.es

Public Health Service has always been a contradictory reality and a challenge. On the one 
hand, even partially, it has ensured widespread or universal benefits and therefore 
guaranteed product and the common good and rights for all. But on the other hand, it has 
been organized in a hierarchical manner and authoritarian, limiting the rights of 
employees and those of patient.es There is therefore an urgent need to socialize and 
democratize salari?.es for Public Health and usager.?re.s.

Austerity policies since the 90s attack the Public Health manner becoming wider and deeper 
to question seriously the principle of universality and the common good. Without this 
strategy of austerity, privatization would simply impossible. Basically, with its formal 
status and private funding subsidized Providence has always been made of the public sector.

This policy of Health that we fight is supported by the bourgeoisie and the Social 
Liberals. It led to question a series of decisive benefit. It has also resulted in 
significantly increased costs to the people through the exponential increase in health 
insurance premiums and deductibles.

Public service on the scaffold

The only feasible policy in the field of Health, in order to guarantee everyone equal 
access to care in relation to their income inevitably pass through a series of structural 
measures aimed socialization. The first is the immediate cessation of privatization, 
public-private partnerships and outsourcing in this sector.

Health must remain a public service to ensure minimum conditions of existence for social 
majorities. A society where health is no longer a service financialised and increasingly 
subject to the profit motive, lead to the exclusion of the weakest among us. We would find 
ourselves in a society care at different speeds, where the Highborne benefit the best care 
while the majority of us would simply afford access to appropriate care benefits.

It is not political fiction. This happens in countries close to us and not only in the 
countries of Southern Europe. The many examples of privatization of Health demonstrated. 
The will of the bourgeoisie and social-liberal implement systems such as Health managed 
care seeks to create a new model. It aims not only lead to more political aust?ritaire 
with greater control and rationing of medical services. All this in order to better manage 
the margins, to abolish the less profitable services in favor of those who generate the 
highest turnovers. We can also make a convergence analysis with the new restrictive 
measures that will soon go into effect in the field of disability insurance.

An egalitarian health policy for everyone to break with the capitalist management 
criteria. We must get out of this logic in favor of a unified system. We must finish the 
multiplicity of private actors and their opaque practices. This means that we must do away 
with private insurance in the field of Health establish a single fund, with contributions 
set according to income. We must get out of the rut of profit. Such objectives are 
inseparable from political democratization and socialization of Public Health, based on 
the rights and usager.?re.s salari?.es Such dynamic elements of socialization leads to 
increasing social and productive self.

What we learn Providence

Long as we allow private groups to settle in the area of ??health, we must deal with 
unacceptable practices which demonstrated GSMN. Government policies and institutional 
again demonstrated their cowardice and their complicity in the case of Providence 
Hospital. The only solution would be just to the resumption of the Providence Public Service.

Health policy must be fair and efficient to create the base. The employ?.es of Providence 
in their just demands we give an example of strength beyond the cantonal borders. There 
decisive goal of the Public Service. If one intends to build a system of quality care and 
solidarity, we must move towards the establishment of a broad forehead and social policy, 
anti-capitalist and anti-bureaucratic.

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Libertarian Socialist Organization - Vaud

Libertarian Federation Mountains

Libertarian Socialist Organization - Bienne

Related Link: http://www.rebellion-osl.ch