Nurses brand pay ruling unacceptable
The Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) has called on the Government to provide an alternative to benchmarking to process their claim for parity with therapeutic grades.
INO general secretary Liam Doran said they did not want conflict, but they could not accept the benchmarking body’s refusal to handle their claim on the grounds it was outside its terms of reference.
“It is unacceptable when we were consistently told by Government, the Labour Court, the Labour Relations Commission, the social partners and the National Implementation Body (NIB) that benchmarking was the only game in town,” Mr Doran said last night.
He warned the INO and the Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA) had not abandoned their pay campaign, which last year led to a bitter seven-week dispute involving work stoppages.
Just four out of 38 health sector grades examined by the Public Service Benchmarking Body were recommended for salary increases.
They included clinical nurse manager III, awarded an increase of 6.8% and assistant directors and directors of nursing, awarded a 10% hike. A number of other grades whose work is comparable to these grades will get similar increases.
SIPTU said the benchmarking body awards showed the work of the ordinary nursing grades “continues to be undervalued”.
In its report, the body said the claim by nurses for parity with the therapeutic grades was beyond its terms of reference because only one other therapeutic grade — speech and language therapy — had been submitted for examination to the benchmarking process. Its conclusion was broadly in line with the argument submitted by employers during the benchmarking process, who contended that the function of the body was to evaluate the role of nurses — and to compare them with jobs of a similar size in the private sector — and not to compare one health grade with another.
Apart from the four grades given pay rises by the body, no progress was made in advancing any of the nurses’ claims.
The report said the unions had been advised by the NIB in May 2007, on settlement of the nurses’ dispute, to put to the benchmarking body “a case which reflects a very much expanded role for nurses and midwives in the context of enhanced duties” and to confirm to the body “the scope and potential of such proposed changes”.
It concluded “no details were given of agreed proposals for specific changes” either by employers or unions, a claim disputed by the INO. It said it “would not be appropriate to recommend increases on the basis of possible future changes”.
The body also rejected a claim for a 10.6% rise to reverse a situation which saw social care workers paid more than nurse supervisors they report to in the intellectual disability sector.
The INO wanted the 10.6% hike to apply to all staff nurses but the benchmarking body sided with employers, who said the anomaly could be addressed by upgrading staff nurses in the intellectual disability sector to the grade of clinical nurse manager 1.
It rejected a claim for a Dublin weighting allowance on the grounds it would be “unrealistic to expect that the introduction of a Dublin allowance could be confined to nurses” and not spread to other public service groups”.
It also rejected a claim for a revised system of payment for shift working on the basis that a compelling argument had not been made, and rejected a claim for a perceptorship (instructor’s) allowance because “a convincing case had not been made”.
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