Nurses’ union to consider all-out strike

THE Psychiatric Nurses’ Association is to consider all-out strike following the failure of benchmarking to deliver any pay increase for the bulk of its members.

Yesterday, PNA general secretary Des Kavanagh said they would be considering the “nuclear option” following the rejection of their claim for parity of pay with therapeutic grades by the Public Service Benchmarking Body.

If they had been granted parity the award would have meant an increase of approximately €6,000 for staff nurses.

The Irish Nurses’ Organisation is also furious at the decision of the PSBB to turn down the claim on the grounds that it was outside its terms of reference.

This means more than 40,000 nurses have come away empty handed from an exercise which unions say they were lead to believe was the “only show in town” in terms of processing their claims.

In terms of future industrial action, Mr Kavanagh said the PNA may take their lead from a campaign by nurses in Finland which eventually succeeded in securing a 24% pay rise, 20% higher than what the government originally offered.

“We are awaiting a report from the Finnish nurses organisation on their long-running dispute.

“They threatened an all-out strike and their government changed the legislation to prevent that.

“They then threatened to withdraw their registration, followed by a threat to resign en bloc.

“At the eleventh hour, their government upped the offer of a 4% pay rise to 24%,” said Mr Kavanagh.

He said they had acted responsibly during the nurses seven-week pay dispute last year and it had got them nowhere.

“Instead the HSE threatened to deduct money from our wages. There were unfortunate lessons in that for us and our view now is that any future industrial action will start and end seriously,” he said.

Mr Kavanagh was also highly critical of certain public sector leaders who he said had spent the last few years trying to condition workers not to expect anything from benchmarking on the grounds that their pensions were valuable.

“I’ve been involved in trade unions for 30 years and I can’t remember any talks where pensions and security of tenure weren’t used by management to try and stifle pay claims.

“To throw it in now as a reason not to grant pay increases is nonsense.”

Mr Kavanagh said certain union leaders had “effectively become part of government” and no longer represented the workers who paid their wages.

“They have been seduced by the trappings of power and by the fact that they are consulted on a national level on virtually every aspect of public life.

“They are spending more and more time in government buildings,” said Mr Kavanagh.

The unions have called on the Government to come up with a process for addressing their claims following the failure of benchmarking to do so.

The PNA and the INO are due to meet next Monday and Tuesday to discuss the implications of this failure.