Bigger venue for nurses’ pay rally

THE venue for this week’s national pay rally for nurses to vent their anger at low pay and long working hours had to be switched at the last minute to secure one big enough to accommodate over 1,000 nurses wanting to take part.

Both the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) and the Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA) had originally booked the conference centre in Croke Park, Dublin — it can accommodate up to 800 people.

But with turnout on Wednesday now expected to well exceed 1,000, the nurses unions have chosen the Helix in Dublin. which can accommodate up to 1,500 people.

Both the INO and the PNA are pursuing an eight-point pay claim outside of the benchmarking process.

At the top of the unions’ agenda is an “anomaly” that sees both qualified and unqualified childcare workers paid up to 3,000 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 they people they supervise.

Among the other seven claims being pursued by the two unions include a reduction in the working week from 39 hours to 35 and the introduction of a Dublin “weighting allowance”.

The Health Service Executive (HSE) has estimated that the cost of the claims, including “knock-on implications” as other workers seek to catch up with any awards made to the nurses, would be €1.67 billion.

Tánaiste and minister for Health, Mary Harney, has said she had no intention of conceding to the nurses’ demand for a weighting allowances on the grounds that other public services workers would seek the same entitlement.

INO deputy general secretary, Dave Hughes, said there was great determination among the nurses to reduce their working week.

“They are waiting too long for the reduction. As far back as 1980 the Labour Court said they should be first in the queue for shorter working hours,” he said.

The nurses’ unions were not the only ones calling for a Dublin weighting allowance. All the Dublin academic teaching hospitals back as far as 2001 had identified that they needed to be able to pay some form of allowance to make it more attractive to stay in Dublin, added Mr Hughes.