Nurses set to agree on national pay rally call

AN emergency motion calling for a national pay rally for nurses to vent their anger at low pay and long working hours is expected to be carried unanimously at the Irish Nurses Organisation AGM today.

The motion, tabled last night, endorses the eight-point pay claim that both the INO and the Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA) are pursuing outside of the benchmarking process.

At the top of the unions’ agenda is an “anomaly” which sees qualified and unqualified childcare workers paid €2,000 more than staff nurses and midwives at every point of their respective salary scales. In the case of childcare workers, both qualified and unqualified, nurses who supervise them have to spend 21 years in the profession before they are paid more than the people they supervise.