HUS is going to fire hundreds of employees – JHL worried about the quality of medical care and the employees’ future

The massive cooperation negotiations of HUS Group have ended with a shocking outcome on Friday 15 November. HUS is going to terminate hundreds of employment relationships. Such cutback threatens patient safety and puts the remaining staff under unreasonable pressure, say JHL’s President Håkan Ekström.

HUS is responsible for organising specialised health care in Helsinki and the Uusimaa region. Now the health care provider is going to cut staff in an unreasonable and irresponsible way. The massive cooperation negotiations of HUS Group ended on Friday 15 November, and the outcome is that hundreds of people may lose their jobs.

The President of Trade Union JHL, Håkan Ekström, finds the situation very worrying.

– HUS seeks drastic savings at the expense of employees’ wellbeing and the functionality of specialised health care. It is impossible to even imagine that axing hundreds of people would not affect the quality of care. Our members who work at HUS are already under a lot of pressure. Their workloads will become unreasonable if they lose this many coworkers.

HUS has had a hiring freeze for a long time, and that has forced employees to push themselves to the extreme and do huge amounts of overtime work. Waiting times for non-urgent specialised medical care in the HUS area are already longer than the law permits. The National Supervisory Authority for Welfare and Health, Valvira, ordered in spring 2024 that HUS has to bring access to care up to the level required by law by the end of March 2025.

HUS explains the need to reduce personnel by hundreds of people with their savings goal of millions of euros. The situation is this because the Finnish Government has neglected its duty to fix the funding of wellbeing services counties, reminds Håkan Ekström.

– The cold cutback policy manifests here in a brutal way. It is evident that neither employees nor people who need medical care nor the largest university hospital in Finland are safe from the axe.

More information:

Håkan Ekström, President of JHL, 040 828 2865