Strikes called off as HSE restores sick pay scheme

AN aborted plan by Sligo General Hospital to end employees’ automatic entitlement to sick pay would have been replicated in other hospitals if the move had not been strongly resisted, IMPACT has claimed.

All strike notices were suspended yesterday after the Health Service Executive said it would instruct management at the hospital to restore the agreed sick pay scheme.

The vast majority of workers at the hospital had voted in favour of strike action.

SIPTU had served notice that their members would go on strike on Tuesday, while IMPACT had planned to place pickets outside the hospital the following day.

The Union of Construction and Allied Trades and Technicians had also approved industrial action and the Irish Nurses Organisation was also balloting for industrial action at the hospital.

The health authority told IMPACT yesterday that it was committed to returning to the terms of all existing national agreements.

A statement released by the HSE said it had been agreed that a high-level group would examine the issues raised in the hospital in a process that would commence on May 13.

The agreement also says that all the parties will use the normal industrial relations process.

IMPACT official, Richy Carrothers, said IMPACT would not allow rogue local managers to dismantle national agreements.

“Unilateral decisions by local hospital managers that inflict greater hardship on workers are not a solution to the wider problems,” he said.

There would be further discussions at national level on the issue of absence management but that would only be in the context of existing national agreements, he said.

Management at the hospital decided to end the right of workers at the hospital to automatic sick pay entitlement, with administration managers making clinical judgments on the validity of sickness and entitlement to sick pay.

Meanwhile, nurses at Killarney Community Hospital took part in a one-hour stoppage yesterday as part of their campaign against imposed changes in management structures they believe will inevitably lead to a downgrading of the hospital’s status.

The nurses, members of the Irish Nurses Organisation, had asked the HSE to suspend the management changes and allow the Labour Relations Commission to intervene.