An ambulance next to the logo of HUS at Meilahti Hospital in Helsinki on 15 August 2024. HUS Group on Thursday announced it is looking to cut around 990 person-years of jobs in order to generate cost savings of 50 million euros, a little over a third of its total saving target of 140 million euros. (Jussi Nukari – Lehtikuva)
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AROUND 990 person-years of jobs are under threat in what appear to be imminent consultative negotiations concerning the entire staff of 28,000 at HUS Group, the provider of specialised health care in Uusimaa.
HUS Group on Thursday revealed that it has proposed the consultative negotiations to its executive board of the joint authority for Helsinki and Uusimaa.
The negotiations may result in measures such as lay-offs, the conversion of permanent contracts to fixed-term contracts, changes in job descriptions, non-filling of vacancies and closer re-evaluations of fixed-term service contracts. Also on the table are employee transfers between units, changes to the form of working hours and adjustments to pay.
Direct patient work will primarily be outside the scope of the measures, according to HUS Group.
The measures should generate cost savings of 50 million euros, accounting for over a third of the savings the municipal authority is pursuing in 2025. The authority has already launched a large-scale adjustment programme and imposed a recruitment ban.
“The proposed budget framework for 2025 and the roughly 140-million-euro need for adjustments it includes leave us with no other options. Unfortunately we will have to seek savings also from staff costs,” said Jari Finnilä, the chief financial officer at HUS Group.
The executive board will convene to mull over the proposal on 19 August. If the negotiations are launched, the objective is to wrap them up by the end of October.
The National Supervisory Authority for Welfare and Health (Valvira) has ordered HUS, along with 14 well-being services counties, to comply with statutory limits for waiting times to non-urgent special hospital care by 31 March 2025. Nina Jaara, the chief shop steward at HUS for the Union of Health and Social Care Professionals in Finland (Tehy), told YLE that the staff cuts will inevitably have an impact on care.
“It sounds very harsh,” she retorted.
“This will inevitably be reflected in everything, and patient queues will grow,” she added. “The result may be that going forward nurses will have to do work that isn’t part of their occupation or job description.”
Jaara also highlighted the disconnect between the staff cuts and the fact that health care providers across the country have long sought to find remedies for the nurse shortage.
“[The lay-offs] definitely won’t make it better.”
Matti Bergendahl, the chief executive of HUS Group, assured Helsingin Sanomat on Thursday that the possible personnel cuts will not compromise patient safety in Uusimaa.
“We won’t be compromising the safety and quality of care. We have to be careful about targeting the cuts. Primarily the cuts won’t be targeted at employees working directly with patients. But no occupational group can be ruled outside the cuts,” he admitted.
HUS Group is estimating that its annual result for this year will fall short of expectations, falling about 70 million euros into the red.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
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Source: www.helsinkitimes.fi
