Santa Cruz de Tenerife 1 Feb. (Europa Press) –
The UGT and CCOO in the Canary Islands have expressed their concern this Saturday regarding the announcement made by the president of the CEOE of the Islands, Pedro Afonso. He has established “a mailbox for anonymous complaints, allowing workers to report their colleagues for allegedly requesting fraudulent sick leave”, a situation deemed “of utmost seriousness”, as the president of the business sector “not only promotes anonymous denunciations but also accuses the SCS doctors of issuing false sick notes.”
In a communiqué, the trade union entities have described this announcement from the presidency of the Canary Islands as “extremely serious”, as Afonso “not only promotes anonymous complaints reminiscent of darker times, but also indirectly accuses Canarian Health System (SCS) doctors of issuing false sick leave, which is utterly untrue.”
“What the president of the Canarian business community seems to overlook is that the sick leave protocols of the CEOE of the Canary Islands reflect an “obscene tendency to further endorse labour exploitation”, as they also oppose another “viable” measure: reducing the working day.
Consequently, both UGT and CCOO Canarias have urged Afonso to “reconsider and revoke this initiative, which will accomplish nothing but incite workplace conflict and perpetuate the vilification of employees experiencing temporary disability”.
The trade unions “remind the head of the business sector” that announcements like this “do not foster an appropriate environment for negotiating the III Interprofessional Bipartite Agreement of the Canary Islands, which the CEOE seems determined to undermine”. They assert that the V Agreement regarding employment and collective bargaining reiterates that only social security doctors are authorised to issue sick and discharge notes.
UGT and CCOO have contended that “these tactics employed by the employers aim solely to belittle doctors, portraying them as individuals incapable of differentiating a genuine illness from mere triviality”, and that these efforts are part of “a strategy to grant mutuals the authority to issue sick notes.”
