The main business and social organizations in the public and private sector of care for the elderly have presented this Monday a manifesto in which they demand the equalization of the salaries of their employees with public workers.
Under the motto ‘Same job, same salary’, social and economic agents requested an extraordinary investment of 250 million euros by the new Government to equate the salaries of professionals in residences and day centers with publicly financed places with the salaries of the residences of the Generalitat. The manifesto proposes that the parties running in the 12-M elections incorporate the demand for equality in their electoral programs and in the future executive.
The organizations want there to be an agreement in Parliament that supports the demand for salary equalization and for this improvement to arrive within the maximum period of one legislature, in compliance with article 166 of the law on measures of the 2020 budgets of the Generalitat for all the social services network.
Among the entities that have supported the manifesto are the Association of Dependency Care Centers (ACAD), the Catalan Association of Assistance Resources (ACRA), the Health and Social Consortium of Catalonia (CSC), the Federation of Associations of Older People of Catalonia (FATEC), La Unión – Association of Health and Social Entities, the General Union of Workers (UGT) and the Union of Small and Medium-sized Residences (UPIMIR).
The text regretted that the call for early elections in Catalonia has left “without effect” a set of agreements signed between the sector and the Department of Human Rights.
At a press conference they denounced the “bad economic conditions” suffered by all professionals in the country’s nursing homes, some 40,000 professionals, 90% women. They have detailed that there is a difference of 40% in the salary level between the public residence agreement and the main agreements applicable to the sector with “same work tasks”
Thus, employers, unions and associations of older people have seen with “great concern” how the interprofessional minimum wage traps certain profiles such as the geriatric assistant. They have also recalled that dignity must be done in the context that grandparents are increasingly vulnerable and require more care.
As they explained, the harmonization of the working conditions of professionals is necessary because it affects the mobility of professionals and makes it difficult to retain and recruit workers. As an example, they have reported that a geroculturist who works 1,792 hours in the private sector has a gross annual salary of 16,384.30 euros, while a geriatric assistant who works in a public residence for 1,633 hours a year and earns 24,375.82 gross annual euros.
For this reason, the organizations estimate that to equalize the salary tables only economically, some 282 million euros are needed to cover the professionals affected by the agreement. To match the price paid per hour, around 93 million euros would be needed.
At the press conference to present the manifesto, the organizations explained that the Generalitat allocates 4,100 euros to each place in the residences, a figure that in the concerted ones is reduced by half. They also warned that in 2023, 11.63% of work absenteeism was detected in subsidized and private residences.
