The five-member committee of the Union of Hospital Doctors of Athens and Piraeus (EINAP) at Laiko General Hospital has issued a strong complaint regarding the treatment of junior doctors. According to the committee, hospital management has recently been pressuring trainees – through clinical department heads – to use their official annual leave instead of taking the occasional rest days they manage to secure. This way, they say, the hospital avoids owing them leave by the end of their training.

The reason? “Because,”the committee explains, “unclaimed annual leave must be compensated financially by law, whereas there is no legal provision for unpaid rest days.”

“It’s outrageous,” they stress, “that at a time when each junior doctor loses dozens of rest days a year and works hundreds of unpaid overtime hours, we’re being pressured to list annual leave instead of rest days – because, as they say, ‘it’s a waste of public money’ when they have to pay for it.”

The committee is demanding an immediate end to this practice and calls for proper support – both physically and mentally – for junior doctors to take the rest time they are entitled to by law and by basic professional ethics.

“We are not slaves. We are not just numbers. We are people and workers with rights – and we will stand up for those rights, however long it takes.”

At the same time, they suggest it may be the right moment for the national doctors’ federation (OENGE) to formally include the following in its list of demands:

  1. Rest days should be officially recorded and not expire after a short time.
  2. Any owed rest days should be compensated just like unused annual leave.

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