Connect has become the latest union with members in the HSE to vote for industrial action, with the result of a ballot run over recent weeks endorsed by the union’s executive on Thursday afternoon.
The union has about 500 members in the HSE, far fewer than Fórsa and the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, both of which, along with Unite, reported votes in favour of action themselves on Wednesday.
Connect’s craft worker members – electricians, plumbers, fitters and other tradespeople – are essential to maintaining services, and while they would provide emergency cover through any action they have the potential to cause significant disruption.
The executives of the other unions and the HSE Staff Panel group of unions are all expected to meet next week to consider how to proceed on foot of the various ballot results. They are required to serve three weeks’ notice on HSE management, but are likely to delay any announcement with no action likely over the Christmas period.
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There has been a campaign of lunchtime protests by staff at HSE office locations and hospitals in recent weeks, including one at St Vincent’s hospital in Dublin on Thursday.
The protests are to highlight the union members’ unhappiness over the HSE’s Pay and Numbers Strategy, its mechanism for containing spending on staff as set out in a document published in June which, the unions argue, restores recruitment restrictions albeit by a different mechanism to the freeze in place for a time earlier this year.
The ballot results announced this week pave the way for an escalation of the campaign, with a work to rule and potentially strikes a possibility at some point from mid-January.
The HSE said it would continue to engage with the unions on the issue, but management says spending and staff numbers are already at record levels in the service, with the number of employees increasing by almost 28,000, or 23 per cent, since the start of 2020.
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