Biology labs called for "total closure" from Tuesday to Thursday

To protest against the anticipated savings in the laboratory
biology in 2020, the unions and major groups called, this Friday, the profession to a "total closure" on October 22, 23 and 24.

"Following the failure of the October 17 negotiation meeting with the Health Insurance", six organizations "decided to confirm the call for the total closure of the laboratories",
said the Union of Biologists (SDB) on its website this Friday.

Nearly 170 million savings planned for the sector

A call shared by the other three unions representative of the profession (SNMB, SLBC, SJBM), the interns in medical biology (FNSIP-BM) and the association of large networks of laboratories (APBM). All of them reject the 170 million savings expected next year, which is equivalent to a freeze on their revenues, when health spending is expected to increase overall by 2.3%. A new coup de plane after "ten years of tariff pressure", resulting in "the breakage of local laboratories", say the six organizations in a petition.

This text has already obtained, according to them, "more than 300,000 signatures" during a first "week of mobilization" in late September, during which "more than 95% of laboratories" closed their doors in the afternoon. The warning shot did not provoke a change of direction of the public authorities. "We did not have satisfactory proposals," confirmed the SDB president, Francois Blanchecotte, reporting timid "advances" equivalent to increases of "0.25% to 0.50% per year."

"This movement will complicate the lives of hundreds of thousands of patients"

"Except miracle this weekend," the showdown will take place and, biologists, "everyone is aligned," he warned. The only discordant voice, the CFDT-Health denounced in a statement "a hijacking of employees" and recalled that employers would be "required to remunerate". Contacted, the Health Insurance has specified that a new meeting was scheduled on November 6 "to submit new proposals."

"We try to take into account their demands, the negotiation is not over," said its managing director, Nicolas Revel. "I do not quite understand this movement that will complicate the lives of hundreds of thousands of patients," he added, noting that relations between the Secu and biologists are the subject of a "triennial protocol, which is not a constraint that I fix on them, but which they have themselves desired ".