Eighty percent of the staff at the Le Bois Vert nursing home, in Toulouse, has been on strike since Thursday, December 2, 2021. They denounce the difficult working conditions, the lack of staff and the non-compliance of the establishment. Management is closed to negotiation.

“We work in macabre conditions, it must be said”. Dana Sisa, nursing assistant and employee representative of the Le Bois Vert nursing home in Toulouse, is angry. This morning of Friday, December 3, she met with most of her colleagues in front of the hospital for their second day of strike.

“Eighty percent of caregivers have stopped work to demand satisfaction of a set of demands“, wrote in a press release the CGT Haute-Garonne union, which ranges from increasing wages to recruiting staff to compensate for the understaffed, through improving working conditions.

Defective equipment, lack of food for breakfasts, establishment that is not in the standards … “Colleagues do not even have work clothes. They come to work with their everyday clothes. It is unacceptable today!”, deplores Dina Sisa.

Another problem: the bathrooms. Only three of the 80 rooms need to be up to standard. The caregivers must themselves lift the residents to place them in the shower. “This is unacceptable”, insists the nurse. “It hurts our backs, and it hurts the residents”.

In the wing of the establishment dedicated to people with Alzheimer’s disease, “Every time it rains, a big stain is made on the ceiling. Water puddles inside“, warns Dina Sisa.

However, the situation is not new. Staff have been trying to alert management for several years. “We were silent during all this time, perhaps because we did not feel ready. But there, we must denounce everything that is happening inside the nursing home”, continue Dina Sisa.

Faced with these working conditions, five staff members have already resigned. Four fixed-term contracts are not going to be renewed. The already understaffed team fears it will harm residents.

The management puts us, but also the residents, at risk.

Dina Sisa, nursing assistant and employee representative of the Le Bois Vert nursing home

“The management is turning a deaf ear”, she breathed. The nursing assistant affirms that, despite numerous reports from the staff, the management of the nursing home repeats to them “For years” than “the outfits are still on order and the bathroom work will be done.”

The management of the nursing home, which received a delegation of strikers on Thursday 2 December accompanied by the CGT 31, did not wish to open negotiations. The union warns that the strike will be renewed as long as the management remains deaf to dialogue.