Unions to begin nationwide protests from Monday
Beginning on Monday, nurses will kick off a campaign of industrial action, starting with a lunchtime protest at Cork University Hospital (CUH). From Tuesday onwards nurses will engage in work stoppages or work-to-rule, with minimum notice to employers. Further lunchtime protests are planned for March 2, at Limerick’s Mid-West Regional Hospital and University College Hospital Galway, and March 9 at the Mater Hospital in Dublin. Psychiatric nurses will also take part in the campaign, initially joining lunchtime protests organised by the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO). If the dispute is not resolved, members of the Psychiatric Nurses Organisation (PNA) will extend their industrial action to psychiatric units on the grounds of general hospitals, acute services, counselling and addiction services, as well as geriatric and intellectual disability units. PNA general secretary, Des Kavanagh, said the work-to-rule will involve “dispensing with non-nursing duties”.
However, care of patients would be a priority during any industrial action, he said.
The INO said its action had the potential to cause chaos. Deputy general secretary, Dave Hughes, said employers would be given no more than a day’s notice of work stoppages or decisions to work-to-rule. He said work stoppages could take place “any day after Monday”. Industrial action will start in one Health Service Executive (HSE) region, but can quickly roll out to take in the entire country. Out-patient clinics and scheduled surgery are the likely first casualties of work stoppages.
The drastic action, jointly planned by the two nursing unions, comes at the end of a long campaign to improve pay and conditions. Specifically the nurses are seeking a reduction in their working week from 39 to 35 hours; a special allowance for nurses working in Dublin; a 10% pay increase and the elimination of an anomaly under which qualified and unqualified childcare workers are paid more than the staff nurses and midwives who supervise them.
The Health Service Executive Employers’ Agency (HSEEA) has called on the nurses to adhere to a Labour Court recommendation and have their claims progressed through benchmarking. Yesterday HSEEA industrial relations chief, Brendan Mulligan, said the threatened action had “serious implications”.
“The nurses have taken a deliberate tactical approach, and we, as services providers, have serious concerns about being able to protect patient care,” Mr Mulligan said.
He said they could not give in to the nurses’ demands because “the stakes are too high for social partnership”. The INO has rejected the benchmarking process, which it says previously copper-fastened nurses’ pay discrepancy with social care workers.
Both the INO and the PNA are critical of employers’ failure to engage with them during the 21 days notice they gave of industrial action. They said the only contact was to agree emergency cover. “They were planning for a dispute rather than a settlement,” Mr Hughes said. Talks to resolve the dispute are not scheduled to take place over the weekend but it is understood informal contact has taken place.
