CASERTA. It is no mystery that the healthcare sector has been suffering, for years, from spending cuts and a reduction in staff hiring. The need for professionalism has been met thanks to the use, sometimes even a simple gimmick, of flexible work typologies leveraging the use of service cooperatives (whose costs weigh on the chapters for "expenditure on goods and services") in order to evade spending limits for staff. On the one hand, this has allowed the regions and healthcare companies to respect budget limits, on the other it has caused an increase in the phenomenon of precarious employment, with the risk that healthcare services may also be entrusted to people who do not always possess the necessary skills. Furthermore, the phenomenon has favored the expansion of clientelistic logics and even the "judicial" data is there for all to see. We are therefore aware that the levels of health services must be linked to a serious personnel policy: in short, only with new hires and with the correct stabilization of precarious staff will patients be able to have an adequate and quality health offer. This was discussed on February 5 in the Social Affairs Commission of the Chamber of Deputies with the representatives of the social health workers of the ASL Caserta, assisted by the lawyers Pasquale Fedele, Raffaele Bencivenga, Rosalba Rispo, Angela Bisogno. The meeting, which allowed us to take stock of the problems of the OSS category, is now starting to bear its first fruits.
The topic, of primary interest for precarious workers of the "health planet" but also and above all for the quality of the offer that is provided to users in compliance with the essential levels of assistance, had immediate response with the interpellation of the Deputies: Sportiello, D'Arrando, Baroni, Bologna, Guidolin, Lapia, Lorefece, Mammi', Menga, Nappi, Nesci, Provenza, Sapia, Sarli, Trizzino, Troiano, Volpi. The Minister promptly argued by recalling the provisions of law no. 208/2015 (stability law 2016) and the extraordinary hiring plan in the National Health Service, partly reserved for precarious workers. The legislation provided, in order to ensure that such extraordinary hirings took into account the real needs of the National Health Service Bodies, that the Regions had to present a specific needs plan, to be submitted to the assessments of the Compliance Verification and Monitoring Tables. As regards the Campania Region, in the meeting of the technical verification table on 17 December 2018, specifically convened to fulfil the assessments of the presented plan, it was considered that the requests for new hirings or those deriving from potential stabilizations can be accepted with respect to the permanent OSS staff present on 31 December 2016, also taking into account the terminations that occurred in 2017, for a maximum of 1.537 units. It followed that the technical table expressly asked the Region (the commissioner structure) to take into account, in such hiring procedures, similar services provided within the cooperatives and to provide information in this regard. Now the ball is in the Campania Region's court, which will have to implement the activities aimed at the actual hiring of the personnel in question, provided that there are no obstacles of any kind remaining.
Article published on 18 February 2019 - 14:21
