Nurses Walk Out on the International Day of the Nurse — SEP Calls a National Strike Across Public, Private and Social Sectors for Tuesday 12 May 2026 as the Ordem dos Enfermeiros Reads a 14,000-Position Shortfall and a 40% New-Graduate Emigration Rate

Nurses across Portugal walk into a one-day national strike on Tuesday 12 May 2026 — the International Day of the Nurse — at the call of the Sindicato dos Enfermeiros Portugueses (SEP). The strike covers the public Serviço Nacional de Saúde, the private hospital and clinic networks, and the Instituições Particulares de Solidariedade Social (IPSS) sector that runs much of the country's long-term-care footprint. A demonstration is scheduled in Lisbon, departing Campo Pequeno and ending at the Ministry of Health on Avenida João Crisóstomo. The strike is the second SEP-called national paralysation in less than five months, following the 20 March action that the union recorded at 71% adherence on the public-sector side.

The Ordem dos Enfermeiros number that anchors the protest

The Ordem dos Enfermeiros, the professional association led by Bastonário Luís Filipe Barreira, has tied its own intervention this week to a hard print: Portugal needs roughly 14,000 additional nurses in the SNS alone to meet the European safe-staffing ratio used by the OECD and the World Health Organization as the baseline for sustainable workload. The Bastonário has used the words 'risco de colapso' explicitly in characterising what the gap means for the system — a phrase that has not appeared in formal Ordem dos Enfermeiros communications since the 2022 winter emergency. The Ordem's submission to the Ministry of Health includes a parallel structural recommendation: the expansion of the enfermeiro de família role across the primary-care line and the better deployment of the enfermeiros especialistas already in the workforce.

The labour-market drift

The Ordem's emigration figure is the most pointed line in this week's submission: roughly 40% of newly licensed Portuguese nurses leave the country every year, with Switzerland, Belgium and Spain absorbing the bulk of the flow. Salaries in those three destinations run 'três a quatro vezes superiores' to Portuguese benchmarks for an equivalent post-licensure grade, the Ordem said. The compounding effect of the emigration line and the existing in-system gap is what the millions-of-hours-of-overtime print captures — the Ordem's analysis attaches the headline 14,000 shortfall to a structural reliance on horas extraordinárias that the Tribunal de Contas has flagged in successive audits as both fiscally unsustainable and a driver of clinical-error risk.

The Trabalho XXI conflict

The SEP's substantive grievance against the Ministry of Health centres on the proposed labour-package known as Trabalho XXI, which lands in Parliament this week. The package's banco de horas grupal clause — the ability to schedule grouped time-banking on a non-individual-consent basis — and the related flexibility-and-overtime provisions are the lines the SEP refuses to accept. The union has said it is 'unavailable for the labour package' as drafted and wants the Ministry to 'evolve in its proposals' by removing the banco de horas and flexibility framework from the nursing-applicable section. The conflict puts the Ministry of Health on the same Trabalho XXI front line that the CGTP and the public-administration unions opened last week.

What the strike does not cover

The minimum-services regime under Portuguese labour law applies to the strike: emergency, intensive-care, oncology-radiotherapy, dialysis and obstetrics units continue to operate at the levels set by the colégio arbitral. The Ministry of Health flagged on Monday that the broader cancellation-and-rescheduling protocol for elective procedures had been activated 48 hours ahead of the action, in line with the 20 March precedent. The SEP and the Ministry have not scheduled a further negotiating round in the week after the strike; the union has placed the next step into the hands of Parliament, where the Trabalho XXI debate will determine whether the action escalates into a longer-duration paralysation.

Sources: SEP strike notice; Ordem dos Enfermeiros submission; Lusa, 12 May 2026; RTP; PÚBLICO; Notícias ao Minuto.