THE LEADERSHIP of the trade union Impact has opposed calls by members for it to seek a pay increase or a financial compensation package for the additional workload caused by the departure of staff under the Government’s voluntary redundancy scheme in the health service.
The Dublin hospitals branch of the union told the union’s health and welfare divisional conference in Tralee that many members were “now saddled with an appallingly high additional workload” as a result of the cut in staff numbers.
However, Impact national secretary Louise O’Donnell, responding to the motion, said claiming extra money was “not realistic or deliverable”. It would also call into question the union’s commitment to the Croke Park agreement which protected members from compulsory redundancy and pay cuts.
Ola Ogidan of the Dublin Hospitals Branch said the Government may have saved a lot of money as a result of the recent voluntary redundancy and early retirement schemes in the HSE but “we have to ask ourselves at what cost and is it blood money?”
“The additional workload has resulted in higher stress levels. In my department alone we are down two staff and another is going on maternity leave.”
She added: “Ideally vacancies should be filled, but if it is not possible to do this then those who are carrying the extra burden should be adequately compensated for the work they are doing.”
However, Ms O’Donnell, who urged that the motion should be remitted to the executive, said the savings achieved by the recent schemes counted as part of the overall savings under the Croke Park deal which were vital to ensure that members suffered no further pay cuts.
She strongly criticised health service management over a failure to put in place arrangements to allow services to continue in the absence of the 2,000 personnel who left the health service under the schemes.
“Five months after the staff have left management still do not have their house in order in terms of agreeing to release staff to fill key posts; reconfiguring posts and services to meet the service demands with the lower staffing levels.”
The conference also warned that the widespread introduction of unpaid graduate internships in the health service could lead to unnecessary risks for patients and the exploitation of vulnerable young workers.
Adrienna Byrne, a social worker and member of the union’s health executive, said properly structured internships could benefit services and staff but that unions had to strike a balance between ensuring that graduates had access to work experience while avoiding risk and inequity in the workplace.
She said the line between meaningful supervised internship and wholesale exploitation of free labour was easily crossed.
Ms Byrne told the conference the union had already come across examples of problems relating to internship programmes in the HSE.
“Impact has already dealt with a case in Cork where a business student was taken on for three months’ unpaid work by the HSE in the south, who was assigned to cover the work of a clerical officer on maternity leave. The work was not relevant to the graduate’s business degree so Impact objected. It was shameless exploitation of the graduate involved. No pay, no relevant experience, just free labour.”
She said there was a very real risk that the institutionalisation of unpaid internship would perpetuate inequality as it effectively excluded graduates from less well-off backgrounds from access to those professions.