Paris (AFP)
"No lab, no hospital": hundreds of laboratory technicians, mainly from the public hospital sector, demonstrated Tuesday in several cities at the call of the CGT, to demand better status and wage increases.
"First to screen, last upgraded", "No arms, no results": several hundred laboratory assistants dressed in white and blue coats (400 to 500 according to the CGT and SUD unions) were gathered at the beginning of the afternoon in front of offices of the Ministry of Health in the capital, near the Montparnasse station.
A mobilization initially motivated by salary demands, but also for "a harmonization of diplomas to the license degree", to open up career prospects in other fields, such as research, explained to AFP Edwige Caroff, president of the French Association of Medical Laboratory Technicians.
The ministry has indeed proposed a "reengineering" of the profession, and an overhaul of the salary scale on January 1, 2022 for the public sector, the account is not yet there for the demonstrators.
"It's a feeling of abandonment, of non-existence. We don't exist at all for the hospital," said Anne-Lise Le Moign, during a two-hour walkout in front of the Lorient hospital ( Morbihan), where around thirty caregivers gathered at midday.
Considering themselves forgotten by "Ségur de la santé", they wanted to "tell the State + do not forget us, we are here +", she added.
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In Marseille too, a hundred people gathered in front of the regional health agency (ARS), with some explicit signs such as "Covid tests - Listen to us, otherwise we stop everything" or "When the laboratory rats leave the ship is that the boat is sinking ".
The CGT had identified at least twenty other gatherings in cities such as Lyon, Lille, Bordeaux and Toulouse.
Employees of private laboratories were called upon to meet "in front of (their) workplaces".
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