Opinions This is a debate post. The post expresses the writer’s views.
It already has have been cut in support and offers to the most vulnerable groups in our city, and now a more difficult everyday life is in store for working people.
The city council claims namely that they can privatize welfare services without affecting the employees’ pay and working conditions. All experience and knowledge indicate that this is unrealistic.
I read with concern and almost disbelief how the health council sets out the city council’s goal of privatizing the municipality’s services. I don’t know whether it is naivety or arrogance that makes the city council say that there is “little to indicate that the salary will be pushed down” when two of the municipality’s nursing homes are now to be put out to competition.
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Unless the city council intends to assume that it is a non-profit actor that will take over the operation of two of the municipality’s nursing homes, we know that this will come at the expense of the employees’ pay and working conditions.
It is not a speculation, but documented through the Welfare Services Committee’s report which shows that commercial companies on average have a salary level that is nine per cent lower than in the public sector. This autumn’s many stories about how remunicipalisation of the health services in Oslo gave the employees higher wages further substantiate this fact.
To think that the tendering of public services works differently in Bergen than in the rest of the country is simply too stupid.
The city council shows one Teflon behavior of the worst kind, when they time and again skip over the counter-arguments, and just let them bounce off.
This impression is greatly reinforced by the fact that the city council is unable to accept that the shop stewards they have met with say that they “completely disagree with tendering.”
The Health Board’s response and behavior in this case testify to a lack of insight into what it is like to be “on the floor” in the health sector. These are often female-dominated professions, where understaffing is rewarded with applause, and where you have to run faster and faster instead of getting a living wage.
The fact that the city councils try their hand at work for one day in the sector they are responsible for does not provide anywhere near sufficient weight, insight and understanding of where the shoe is pressing. On the contrary, the city council continues its Teflon attitude, where all warnings from employees and shop stewards who shout warnings about the disastrous consequences that a tendering will lead to, continue to bounce off.
What Bergen needs is non-profit welfare, where the community’s money goes to common welfare – not into the pockets of private welfare profiteers.
They are employees in the health and care sector who keep the wheels of our society moving. The least we can do as a thank you is to ensure good wages, pensions and working conditions for them.
Then we have to listen to those who actually know where the shoe presses – the employees and union representatives.
And they, they completely disagree that tendering is the solution.
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