Hundreds of hospital and social services staff stopped work on Tuesday to demand better salaries and denounce understaffing, in a collective action set to take place every Tuesday until 7 November.
Workers at public hospitals, local administration offices and CPAS social services centres across the Brussels-Capital Region took part in the action, which saw them stop carrying out work from 30 minutes to one hour, 7sur7 reports.
The action, backed by the FGTB-CGSP union for public employees, aims to denounce the new regional government for failing to include their demands in their coalition agreement.
Public workers will stop working every Tuesday until 7 November, when a regional strike is set to take place.
The action follows months of demonstrations and protests actions in public hospitals, as staff call on officials to improve their salaries and hire additional personnel, according to BX1.
The movement also seeks to call for better financing of public health services from the federal authorities, and comes after public hospitals in both Brussels and Wallonia were rocked by weeks of demonstrations from staff who denounced the "unsustainability" of their "immense workloads."
Gabriela Galindo
The Brussels Times