Student nurses threaten strike over pay cut move

STUDENT nurses are threatening to strike over a Government plan to impose pay cuts, a move described by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) as reducing them to the level of “slave labour”.

Up to now, students were paid 80% of a staff salary during their nine-month placement in hospitals as part of their four-year degree programme. Last December, however, the Government decided last December to phase out the payment and abolish it in 2015.

Next Wednesday, around 6,000 student nurses and midwives will stage lunchtime protests at 13 hospitals in opposition to the cuts. The action will be followed by a march and rally in Dublin on Wednesday, February 16.

The INMO said the student nurses worked exclusively on the frontline, providing direct patient care and that the campaign of resistance was fully supported by the other unions representing nurses.

The nurses’ union said it will ballot all 4th year pre-registration nurses/midwives for a withdrawal of labour with industrial action commencing in early March, if there is no resolution.

The INMO said the pay cut has already been referred to the Labour Relations Commission amounted to a breach of contract.

The union has sought to meet the leaders of the five political parties after the protest march and will be asking them to confirm that, when in Government, they would reverse the pay cut.

INMO general secretary Liam Doran said no one could seriously expect people to work a full roster and range of duties for no pay.

Sandra Ryan, a student nurse at Waterford Institute of Technology, is due to start her internship at Waterford Regional Hospital in January 2012. A single mother of two young children, she receives a Back to Education allowance of €265 a week and was banking on receiving around €400 a week when working as a 4th year pre-registration nurse. “I went back to college to better my life and to have a better future for my children instead of sitting at home all day and relying on social welfare.”