Nurses take pay protest to the streets

THE dispute between nursing unions and healthemployers worsened yesterday when more than 700 nurses took part in the first phase of planned nationwideindustrial action.

Members of the Irish Nurses’ Organisation (INO) and the Psychiatric Nurses’ Association (PNA) rallied at the gates of Cork University Hospital (CUH) for a lunchtime protest to highlight demands for improved pay and conditions.

INO general secretary Liam Doran said health employers had made no attempt to resolve the dispute in the 21 days since the unions served the Health Service Executive Employers Agency (HSEEA) with strike notice.

Local INO representative Patsy Doyle said the nurses were “absolutely resolute” in their determination tosecure improved pay and conditions.

Two further lunch-time protests are scheduled to take place in Limerick and Galway on Friday, March 2, and in Dublin, outside the Mater Hospital, on Friday, March 9. After that, if no progress is made, the campaign will escalate to include a nationwide work to rule and/or short rolling work stoppages in identified work locations. Employers willreceive minimum notice of this phase of action.

Yesterday, general manager of CUH Tony McNamara said there were no reports of disruption to patient services as a result of the protest. However, he said the hospital had great difficulty in drawing up any contingency plans to protect patient care because of the unspecified nature of future industrial action.

“We don’t know where we are going to be hit, or the nature of what is planned and this concerns us and every other hospital greatly. It is impossible to come up with contingency plans when you don’t know what to expect. We sincerely hope that patient services will not be affected.”

Nurses have agreed to provide emergency cover in the event of work stoppages, providing members who do work get paid.

The country’s 40,000 nurses are seeking a reduction in their working week from 39 to 35 hours, a 10% pay rise, a Dublin working allowance and elimination of a pay anomaly which sees qualified nurses and midwives receive less pay than unqualified childcare workers who report to them.

Yesterday Brendan Mulligan, assistant chief executive of the HSEEA, said: “The public service benchmarking process provides a mechanism to have these claims adjudicated on and even at this stage we would urge the unions to accept the Labour Court Recommendation and also the terms of the new Social Partnership Agreement.”

The unions have rejected the LRC recommendation that they process their claims through benchmarking on the basis it copperfastened the pay anomaly between nurses and unqualified childcare workers.

Fine Gael health spokesperson Dr Liam Twomey called on the Government to engage with nursing unions in order to avoid disruption to patients.