For the same day, a protest rally is scheduled in front of the Ministry of Health, in Lisbon, announces in a statement the National Union of Senior Technicians of Diagnosis and Therapeutics (STSS), adding that it is also planned, "in the coming weeks, actions by institution with their own specificities".

"The professionals demand the scheduling of a meeting with the Minister of Health, with a view to establishing a negotiation protocol that will schedule the treatment of the matters claimed, similar to what has been done with other health professionals", emphasizes the STSS.

For the union president, Luís Dupont, "the Government's attitude, which continues without giving answers and without scheduling a meeting with the representative unions" of these workers, "unlike what has already happened with the unions of other senior technician careers in the Health area, demonstrates a serious lack of respect for these professionals".

Luís Dupont says it is unacceptable "the total and absolute lack of response to the requests for a meeting", which the union presented to the Minister of Health, "for the treatment and resolution of the situations arising from the incorrect interpretation and incorrect or non-application of the rules concerning the conditions for career transition and remunerative repositioning" for senior technicians in diagnosis and therapeutics with public and private employment contracts.

"The maintenance of incorrect accounting of performance evaluation points, with the consequent losses in the conditions of remuneration progression, and the urgent need to regulate the matters that remain from the previous career statute" are other situations pointed out by the union leader.

"It is in the Government's hands to stop this strike and other protest actions. The workers demand answers from the supervisory authority and that it demonstrates interest in dialoguing with all health professionals and not just with some, ignoring one of the largest groups of the NHS", insists Luís Dupont.

Among the main issues to be resolved, the union highlights the recognition of the one and a half points to be attributed by effect of the performance evaluation for each year of work, regardless of whether or not it is evaluated and above all of the employment contract in question, the communication, by the institutions, of the points attributed by virtue of the application of the performance evaluation system and the resolution of all the injustices resulting from the process of revision and unfreezing of careers in the two contractual regimes.

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