“Manager, listen, Santa Rita is in the fight”, “If this is not fixed, strike, strike, strike”, were some of the warnings that were heard yesterday by the workers of Hogar Santa Rita who attended the demonstration summoned by the works council due to the delay in the payment of their salaries.
About 40 people – of the 430 who work in the center – gathered yesterday for an hour and a half at the gates of the nursing home, located in Puerto de la Cruz, to demand the collection of payroll “in time and form” and demand an end to “the lack of sensitivity of the Management towards its professionals, who live with the uncertainty of payment”.
In this sense, they reproached those responsible for the Foundation that “at no time did they address the Works Council to give justification, or information in this regard, or any other circumstance that affects the staff”, declared the general secretary of FESP- UGT Tenerife, Juan Carlos Viñas.
In this sense, both he and the head of the social and health sector of the Workers’ Commissions, Alexis Rodríguez, argued that every time they are going to request justification for the arrears, the manager of the foundation “hides behind the non-payment of the IASS, when he has said on several occasions that the situation of the Foundation is one of solvency”. Therefore, they also do not understand “why you tell us that no bank gives you a loan.”
The management insisted that the main creditor is the IASS, an autonomous body managed by the Cabildo de Tenerife, with which 274 of the 500 existing places are arranged and when it is late in paying the foundation “it has a rebound effect on the payment to the personnel and thus it can be demonstrated”, they argued.
However, the Cabildo made it clear that “it is up to date with payments and is even made in terms shorter than what is legally established.”
According to the works council, the only solution to put an end to a “disastrous” management is that the Insular Corporation and the representatives of the workers – with voice but without vote – become part of the Board of Trustees, because the current manager “believes that it is yours” when it is “thanks to the staff that the center maintains despite the fact that most of them receive a net salary of 900 euros”.
Regarding the low representation of the personnel who attended the call yesterday, both union leaders justified that there is still “there is still fear of demonstrating” and in addition, there are employees “who are also founding members and are living from the beginning a management model that exercises pressure on them.”
