It is known that the Quirónsalud Foundation receives very valuable income from public health in Madrid. Its value is about $1,000 million annually, according to what EL PAÍS newspaper revealed this year, thanks to an invoice submitted by patients who have a waiting list. What has gone unnoticed is that the sanitation workers who make this highly profitable work possible are considered exploiters, “slaves,” according to the criticism of the union Comisiones Obreras, mayor of the Madrid region of the company, which for a quarter of a century has been the beginning of a mobilization campaign that will continue until after Navidades. Employees strive to ensure that the company’s increased income translates into better salaries.
Nearly five people gathered at midday at the main door of Villalba Hospital in the first of four protests announced over the next few weeks. Madrid’s president and junior chancellor, who billed Quirón for hundreds of thousands of euros every year, was the subject of his wrath with songs like: “El Grupo Quirón es Ayuso y su gestión” or “Alberto Quirón leaves us without a smile.”
CC OO wonders that over the past few years, the number of patients attending public hospitals run by Quirón and the money billed to the company has increased, but their salaries have not even risen to the third level. The worsening situation is greater among the three hospitals governed by the Private Health Collective Agreement – Villalba, Valdemoro and Rey Juan Carlos de Mostoles – with fewer work benefits than in the other three hospitals of the Servicio Madrileño de Salud (SERMAS). In the case of the fourth public hospital run by Quirón, Fundación Jiménez Díaz, the agreement is the same as that with Sermas, but CC OO ensures that new employees have access to private sector conditions.
Thus, a nurse and doctor in the public sector receive an average of 2,200 and 3,500 euros per month, and in the public sector run by Kiron 1,400 and 2,000 euros, according to CC OO.
Double ratio is given in other aspects of work like payment for festivals, ratio of workers per bed or no improvements due to seniority. “On December 31 I will work for an additional 38 euros, but in public I will be paid more than double for making this shift,” asked journalists covering the demonstration of the nurse, Federico Gatto.
Conflict broke out in some hospitals as the number of outpatients treated increased year after year, which is why Quirón receives an additional payment from the government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso. In Villalba, which opened in 2014, the number of patients of this type served last year rose from 7,582 to 33,486. The high waiting list for consultations or tests throughout the region has turned these hospitals into the premium resource for reducing these delays, although this decline is only visible in the figures published monthly on the Independent Web. As part of this lucrative policy, public hospitals in Kiron start a new shift at dawn.
Health ‘sold out’
The focus continued for an hour in Villalba. Dozens of them stopped at the throat as patients entered and exited through the main entrance, many of them without paying attention to the complaints. A CC OO spokesperson explained over the microphone that this protest was in defense of everyone’s health. “Public health is sold by the group to private companies, including Alberto Quiron,” he said, referring to Alberto Gonzalez Amador, a businessman from Ayuso who is at the heart of the political war in Madrid. A judge is investigating Amador for bribing half a million euros to an executive at Quirónsalud Group, whom he had been employing in consulting for a decade.
The microphone’s spokesman, Samuel Mosquera, explained to those present all the reasons for this fight: “The company does not stop making money and these people are increasingly being exploited. Part of this responsibility falls on the president of the community,” he added: “We save lives and the company does not stop billing. Many professionals wanted to be here and there because the company is holding you back.” The hospital has a roster of more than a thousand employees. After they focused, they responded with songs: “We are not slaves, we are health workers!” y “¡Sa-ni-dad, pu-bli-ca!”
Several workers asked EL PAÍS that a woman who said she was a Quirónsalud employee, wearing dark clothes, was picking them up and taking pictures. The same woman also asked this reporter if she was a journalist and from which media outlet.
The Aire protest will be followed by another one coming at 11.00 at the gates of the Rey Juan Carlos de Mostoles Hospital. CC OO plans to continue behind Navidades with other concentrations without closure, in Valdemoro and Fundación Jiménez Díaz, which are located in the capital.
Mosquera says the workers spent many years trying to improve their conditions. In 2021, he wrote a letter to the health advisor, Enrique Ruiz Escudero, which, in my opinion, was never challenged. In 2023 and 2024 they sent writings to the company and finally started negotiations, which were implemented in March of this year and the company stopped drying in July, according to Mosquera. “We went into conflict because there was no other way for us,” he says.
The Consejería de Sanidad has sent the company to this journal explaining that this is a purely commercial matter. Quirónsalud emphasized that the ideas that this hospital is very profitable and that the company is selfish are wrong. A hospital spokesman supported the following: “During 14 years of running this hospital, workers’ salaries increased by 50% even though per capita income did not increase, and even though medicines and treatments became more expensive.”
The agreement governed by workers in Villalba, Valdemoro and Rey Juan Carlos is an agreement for the entire private sector and can be improved through specific agreements for each company. CC OO says private health companies like Sanitas have given their employees better conditions for this route and is asking Quirón to do the same. Nurse Federico Gatto asks a question shared by many in Villalba: “Our employees in a public hospital cannot fight for the same agreement as a dental clinic with four employees, with all due respect to that clinic.”
Discontent is also growing among the populations served by these hospitals. Delays have increased in recent years with the increase in the number of outpatients. If you suspect that the company has two waiting lists, this is an expense for long-term patients, because they get an additional benefit, and it is slower for local residents, who are forced to attend without additional income. “A los de fuera les dan cita de inmediato, pero si eres de aquí te ponen en otralista”, quejaba una prostante, María Luisa Gómez.
Villalba’s employees and neighbors make sure the company also sends locals to workers at Fundación Jiménez Díaz, in the capital, where they can see that Quirón is paying more bills. This happened in June to one of Becerril de la Sierra’s elders, 67-year-old Pedro Manuel Antón. This jubilee joined health workers to shout loudly: “I just want them to take care of me with a decent salary!”
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