Health service staff ballot for strike over job evaluations
Unions insist job evaluation is an established tool that allows the knowledge, skill, and responsibilities associated with individual jobs — rather than grades or staff categories — to be assessed and appropriately rewarded.
While a job evaluation does not guarantee an upgrading, many staff believe their roles have grown considerably as they have taken on more work and responsibility over the years.
The scheme was suspended by health service management eight years ago but unions Impact and Siptu say a core component of the Lansdowne Road Agreement was to lift the suspension.
According to Paul Bell, divisional organiser with Siptu which represents 30,000 workers across the health service, management has given five separate commencement dates for its re-introduction “all of which have failed to materialise”.
“The continued failure of the HSE and Department of Health to set a concrete date for the re-introduction of this job evaluation scheme is totally unacceptable,” he said.
“Understandably, our members are very frustrated and have now decided that they have no option but to ballot for strike action in order to force a just solution to this situation.”
Impact trade union, which represents 8,000 health service clerical, administrative and management staff, said the evaluation scheme’s eight-year suspension had led to a significant backlog of existing and potential applications from workers who had taken on substantial extra responsibilities as staff numbers fell dramatically during the economic crisis.
Impact national secretary Eamonn Donnelly said: “Our health service members backed the deal on the clear understanding that it would deliver the reopening of the HSE scheme.
“I agree when I hear ministers say Lansdowne Road is the only game in town. But I can’t find the section of the agreement that allows management to pick and choose the bits it wants to abide by.”
Impact said it raised the issue at the Lansdowne Road Agreement health sector oversight body, which monitors implementation of the agreement in the sector.
“It subsequently became clear that health service management wanted to renege on the deal, despite the clear Lansdowne Road Agreement commitment that the scheme would be re-opened,” said Mr Donnelly.
