Tag Archives: Health workers

Coronavirus diary day 70 – Macron’s health reform consultation – don’t get your hopes up

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The government is to start a consultation on salvaging the health service this afternoon. It will be by videoconference, Coronavirus oblige. The choice of chair does not bode well for anyone hoping for revolutionary action.

“Healthworkers for a new health service”, a poster from May 1968

Ministers have dubbed the event the “Ségur de la santé”, puzzling at least one reader of Le Monde, who asked its journalists “What is a Ségur?”.

“Factories occupied”, a poster from May 68

The nickname is a reference to French political folklore. In 1968 De Gaulle’s ministers negotiated with union leaders to end the general strike that brought the country to a halt (sound familiar?). The meeting took place at the Labour Ministry in the rue de Grenelle, so were referred to by that name.

Since then governments who have wanted to give the impression they were launching some momentous initiative in consultation with the little people – the Sarkozy government’s emission of hot air on the  environment in 2007, for example – have referred to them as “Grenelles”, regardless of whether they took place in said street or not.

This time round some bright spark has got with the times and named the meeting after the address of the Health Ministry, avenue de Ségur, even though most of the participants will not actually be going there but e-intervening.

The meeting is to be chaired Nicole Notat, not a good sign that anything very radical will come out of it. Notat was leader of the CFDT union confederation from 1992 to 2002 and an enthusiastic practitioner of the strategy of ingratiating itself with employers and governments by undermining more militant action by other unions.

On the other hand, the mood in the hospitals appears to be potentially insurrectional, as Le Monde’s tweet of healthworkers carrying a banner calling for a “general dream” (it’s a play on words with the French word grève for strike) indicates:

Here a doctor accuses the government of torpedoing the negotiations by choosing Notat, failing to invite unions and trying to scrap the 35-hour week in exchange for pay rises:

The consultation starts at 3.30pm today and will last into July.

A slight reversal of the downward curve in hospital admissions took place yesterday. Seven more patients were admitted nationwide. The number in intensive care continues to decline and most experts seem to think a second wave unlikely. This week should be a decisive test of whether that is so.

France’s Covid-19 death toll now officially stands at 28,367, up 35 in 24 hours. 17,185 people are in hospital, up seven, with 1,655 in intensive care, down 10. 64,617 patients have been discharged, 70 yesterday.

This is day 70 of this diary, which you can celebrate as you wish. I am going to stop posting every day but will keep writing regularly, so watch this space (and tell your friends to do so too).

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Coronavirus diary day 62 – Yellow Vests are back (a bit) as new virus clusters spotted

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The Gilets Jaunes are back. A few of them, anyway. And 25 clusters of Covid-19 cases have been identified in France since lockdown was lifted, although the situation does still seem to be improving.

A few hundred Yellow Vests appeared on the streets of several French cities on Saturday, apparently just to remind the government that they’re still there.

The biggest assembly, which wasn’t that big, seems to have been down south, in Montpellier. Others were in the Breton capital, Nantes, which can always be relied on for a protest whenever the possibility arises, Lyon, Toulouse, and Saint-Nazaire.

With demonstrations banned, some gathered in groups of 10, the legal limit of an assembly under the anti-Covid state of emergency. That didn’t stop police being considerably tougher on them than US cops have been on the armed lockdown-defiers there.

There were a number of arrests and police used their truncheons against the crowd in Montpellier, one woman being injured in the head.

In Bordeaux and Toulouse (see below), shopkeepers took the demonstrators to task for defying the lockdown and obstructing trade in these straitened times.

Business was also on Interior Minister Christophe Castaner’s mind, as he reminded the public of the demo ban.

“In this period when we must help economic recovery and a form of liberty for our fellow citizens,” he said. “People who want to obstruct commercial activity have to understand that this is not the moment to express oneself in this way.”

Twenty-five new clusters of the virus have been identified in France since the end of lockdown, Health Minister Olivier Véran has told the Journal du Dimanche.

New cases were to be expected, he said, and the only part of France where there has been a resurgence so far is in Mayotte, an overseas territory in the Indian Ocean. (Yes, it’s part of France, as are French Guiana in South America, New Caledonia and French Polynesia in the Pacific, and several other Dom-Toms, as they’re called.)

Following Macron’s mea culpa in a hospital this week, Véran promised a consultation and review of the government’s health policy and pay rises for healthworkers, on top of the bonuses that have already been decided on.

France’s Covid-19 death toll now officially stands at 27,625, 96 in the last 24 hours. 19,432 people are in hospital, down 429, with 2,132 in intensive care, down 71. 61,066 people have been discharged from hospital, down 618 yesterday.

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