INTERVIEW
While the coronavirus epidemic continues to mobilize hospital staff, on the front line for many weeks, Emmanuel Macron went to the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital on Friday and said he wanted to "end" the "impoverishment" nursing staff and promised that the state would be "there". On the same day, the government arrested details of the "Covid bonus" promised to hospital staff. Guest of Europe 1, Aissou Asdine, secretary general of the CGT of the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, present during the presidential visit, returned to this bonus which can go up to 1,500 euros. "We are not going to spit on the money (...) but we want the revaluation of our salary", he insists.
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Promised at the end of March, but suspended since then with the publication of a decree, the premium will be paid to "all professionals of public health establishments" mobilized "in the face of the epidemic", announced on Friday the Ministry of Health . This reward, tax-exempt and exempt from social security contributions, will reach 1,500 euros for caregivers who have worked in the departments most affected or in hospitals that have received patients. For the others, it will be 500 euros.
"We need money for the end of the month," recognizes Aissou Asdine. But, he adds at once, denouncing wages "execrable, the lowest in Europe", what the caregivers and the unions demand, "it is the revaluation of our wages. We need automatically 300 euros increase ".
"The population has realized that the hospital is in danger"
Aissou Asdine also returned to the visit of Emmanuel Macron, during which the President of the Republic was arrested several times by personnel. "We told him that our working conditions are unacceptable (...) and that the population has realized that the hospital is in danger". Regarding the promises of the head of state and government, "I only ask to see", reacts the trade unionist, before warning: "If these commitments are not respected, the population, all those who applauded us, will be in the street with us tomorrow if we have to demonstrate. "
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"Today, a large number of caregivers and nurses are in over-indebtedness committee," further warns Aissou Asdine. And to conclude: "We can no longer accept that in the public hospital, for economic reasons, successive governments have decided to relocate the manufacture of masks to other countries, and that we pay the consequences."