Overtime paid late, if at all. This is what the caregivers of the Avicenne hospital in Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis) have been going through for several months, mobilized on the front line since last year, to fight against the Covid-19 epidemic.
Dozens of unpaid overtime hours, thousands of euros less
Malika is a nurse anesthetist at SAMU 93. Since November, she has been waiting for the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris, to pay her 35 additional hours and it is not for lack of asking. “When I go to the personnel office in January, I am told that it will be paid in February, then in February in March … every month I am told that it will be paid the following month!”, she laments. “It’s painful to have to claim your salary, we shouldn’t have to do that”.
All the less acceptable as she sometimes feels to work overtime under pressure. “We have no choice, we are in great demand, we receive emails to replace the right or the left. We feel a little harassed”, says Malika.
– Hajera Mohammad
His colleague, Sabrina, emergency nurse for ten years, is still waiting for the payment of 24 additional hours, or more than 1,000 euros to be touched in theory. “I ask nothing more than to be paid for the work I do, it’s just our due, it’s a matter of respect!”, remember the caregiver, affected by Covid-19 during the first wave.
These overtime hours increased to 150%, “we actually do them because it puts a little butter in the spinach, but we also do it because we know that patients need us”, reminds the nurse.
A chronic understaffing in the management service according to the CGT
How to explain these late payments? According to Lucie Branco, secretary of the CGT Avicenne, the payroll and management service is in “chronic understaffing”. Before the merging of the Avicenne hospitals in Bobigny, Jean Verdier in Bondy and René-Muret in Sevran into a single hospital group, each establishment had its own administrative department. From now on, one and the same service takes care of it for these three hospitals which represent more than 3,000 agents. “Some time ago, we still had 12 management agents, today we have 8 who are overwhelmed, exhausted”, explain Lucie Branco.
Call to strike on March 12
However, it is difficult for the unionist to put forward a precise figure of employees affected by these late payments, nor an overall volume of unpaid hours. But according to Lucie Branco, employees of the Sevran and Bondy hospitals are experiencing the same fate and for her the problem is broader: it is the overall lack of staff within the hospital that’s involved, she said.
“It’s not normal that we are forced to work overtime because we are not hiring. The priority today in the hospital is to hire”, even more in a department where the candidates are not numerous, she recalls.
To alert on this problem of unpaid hours and missing staff, the CGT called a strike for Friday March 12 in the Avicenne and René-Muret hospitals in Sevran. A meeting is scheduled for Wednesday between the management of the hospital and the unions, according to our information.
AP-HP’s response
The AP-HP, contacted by France Bleu Paris, acknowledges that in the last quarter of 2020, the HRD of the University Hospitals of Paris Seine-Saint-Denis has experienced several departures, “which caused a delay in the processing of overtime“. A regularization plan was launched in December and to this day, “almost all of the overtime has been paid”.
However, “there are about ten situations with a remainder of overtime to pay”. According to the AP-HP, “it appeared that payroll processing was particularly vulnerable to absenteeism”. A new organization will be put in place from April 1, 2021.
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