Talks to avert the threatened strike by non-consultant hospital doctors (NCHDs) on Wednesday are deadlocked over overtime rates. Both sides are to meet again at 11 a.m. today.
The NCHD committee of the Irish Medical Organisation has given the employers and the Labour Relations Commission until 5 p.m. today to reach an interim settlement to their claim for a new contract. It wants overtime to be paid at time and a half or double time. This would more than double the current rates.
The 5 p.m. deadline on the talks appears to have taken the LRC and the Health Service Employers' Agency by surprise. They had hoped an unequivocal commitment by the HSEA to implement the 1997 contract for NCHDS, including payment of overtime arrears, would defer the strike.
However, the IMO's director on industrial relations, Mr Fintan Hourihan, said guarantees on fully implementing the 1997 contract had been the necessary precondition for entering talks at the LRC and nothing more. "If the employers are talking about deferral of industrial action there must be substantial progress on the main issues and we've identified new overtime arrangements as a priority."
Mr Hourihan said that if sufficient progress in talks was not made by 5 p.m. today it would be too late the defer Wednesday's action.
It is understood that the first session of talks, which lasted over eight hours yesterday, was taken up with a detailed presentation from the IMO of what it saw as the priorities in any new contract. Afterwards, the chief executive of the Health Service Employers' Agency, Mr Gerard Barry, said both sides "face a difficult agenda. It's too early to say if we'll succeed in squaring the circle."
He confirmed that overtime was "the big crunch issue". He also confirmed that management wants to introduce a shift system for doctors similar to that operating for other health professionals.
"We need to look at the whole area in which medical manpower is required rather than tinkering around the issues. The IMO says it wants to address the overtime issue now. We are saying the PA Consultancy study on manpower will be finished within six weeks."
But the IMO argues that the issue of overtime rates is separate from the study.
It now appears that the only way of averting Wednesday's one-day stoppage, and a two-day strike next week, would be an interim settlement on overtime.
That was the challenge facing the LRC last night.