Tijuana.- A strike by 3,400 state health workers did not materialize Tuesday, at least for now, following a 3½-hour, closed-door meeting between state officials and union leaders .
María Elia Cabañas, secretary general of the Tijuana chapter of the national union of public
health-care workers, said the two sides came to some verbal agreements at the meeting, held at the
Rosarito Beach General Hospital.
However, union leaders do not yet have a document signed by Baja California's Health Secretary José Guadalupe Bustamante that improves working conditions and benefits, Cabañas said.
She said that the director of the state's Human Resources agency, Olivia Castro, agreed during the meeting to respond in writing to the union's demands by 10 a.m. Wednesday morning.
"You could say that we don't have anything yet," she said. "Tomorrow (Wednesday) we will decide what to do about the strike."
The spokesman for the Baja California's health agency, Raymundo Aguilera, said that Bustamante would not be issuing a comment about the labor dispute.
The spokesman said that most of the union's demands would not be resolved locally, since they fell under federal jurisdiction.
For her part, Cabañas said that of the 19 requests the union had made, 13 dealt with the state government, and the rest had to do with benefits.
The union is seeking overtime pay and additional compensation for working in high-risk areas, among other demands.
The union, which represents the largest group of health-care workers in Baja California, had vowed to go on strike beginning Tuesday. The group is made up of 3,400 employees who work for the state, around 2,000 of them in Tijuana.
