Bon Secours nurses to hold protest today over pay cuts

UP to 800 nurses working for the country’s largest private healthcare provider will stage lunchtime protests at four hospitals today to highlight their dissatisfaction at unilateral pay cuts.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), which represents nurses at the four Bon Secours hospitals in Cork, Dublin, Galway, and Tralee, claims their employer reneged on a Labour Relations Commission agreement, brokered in February, to restore to nurses a 5% cut deducted from their January pay.

According to the INMO, this cut was announced in December and implemented unilaterally in January. When the issue ended up in the LRC, after the union claimed the company had breached the Payment of Wages Act by imposing the cuts, part of the agreement was that money deducted in January would be restored regardless of the final outcome of the process.