THE nurses deal is a good one, in terms of the PCW. But that's the problem. As one senior union activist puts it, "a lot of our members don't know anything about the PCW, and they don't give a damn about the PCW".
It is over 16 years since nurses threatened strike action, and even then only psychiatric nurses actually carried from that aberration every increase nurses have been awarded has come through. Apart from that aberration every other increase nurses have been awarded has come through national pay agreements and relativity claims based on what other groups within the public service had already won.
That lack of militancy has left nurses well behind the group they most like to relate to at least in pay terms - the teachers. The fact that the secondary teachers' unions have now rejected their own PCW offer has had a major destabilising effect on the nursing ballot which is due to conclude, appropriately enough, on May Day.
In industrial relations terms the nurses are innocents abroad. They have been told, not only by their union leaders but by the media and the public, that they are underpaid and undervalued. Even Fianna Fail, which was in power when the PCW was negotiated, broke with its normal bipartisan approach to national pay deals to make a special plea on their behalf in the Dail.
It is perfectly natural therefore that nurses should now think they are a special case. Many of them have only begun looking at what people in other professions are earning for the first time.
A gradual process which has been taking place for the past 20 years has finally come of age. Nurses are no longer a group of women in a job until they get married, with a small minority, usually single, continuing on because they have a vocation.
Nursing has become a career and it is one with few promotional outlets and low pay, even for the minority who win promotion.
Despite their intimate knowledge of all these factors, the negotiators of the new deal - on both sides of the table - have been taken by surprise at the bad reaction to the terms. They have every justification in describing this as a good package, at least within the terms of the PCW.
The unions sought to raise the top of the nurses' pay scale from £17,485 to over £20,000, and had a target of £20,500. They achieved £20,350. The top of the psychiatric nurses scale will rise from £17,605 to £20,474.
Public health nurses will see their salary ceiling of £20,540 rise to £24,447, while senior ward sisters are being offered an increase from £19,727 to £23,520. In the management grades the increases are very significant. For senior directors of nursing in the State's largest hospitals, the top of the scale will rise from £27,815 to £35,000, with another £2,500 available in performance related pay.
A total of 1,200 temporary nurses will be given permanent positions and there will be a limited early retirement scheme under which 600 nurses aged 57 can leave the profession at 60. Nurses will also be given an input into future policy making.
For its part, management has achieved agreement from the unions to greater flexibility, including annualised hours, having a higher ratio of care attendants in the wards and winning co operation with pilot schemes to test out new technology and forms of organisation.
The unions have also agreed to accept lower rates of pay for new entrants to the profession and a longer pay scale.
The big flaw in the package is the length of time it will take to implement. The present nine year scale for staff nurses is being extended to 15. It will become 17 years for entrants. About 50 per cent of staff nurses have at least 12 years' service so they will move relatively quickly to the top of the new scale. But for the rest there is no immediate increase on offer.
For ward sisters the situation is worse. None of them can hope to reach the top of their scale before 2003, regardless of service. In the meantime they will see long serving staff nurses under them earning more in basic pay, not to mention shift premiums.
An anomaly in the rates for psychiatric nurses has also arisen. Staff nurses with long service would actually be paid more on promotion than an existing nursing officer (the psychiatric equivalent to a nursing sister) with up to 10 years' service.
Over time these anomalies would disappear, but a time span of seven years for implementation of new pay scales is a long one. Although, as one of the negotiators, Ms Christina Carney of Impact, points out: "Nurses will spend most of their working lives at the top of the scale. They are better off having a good maximum salary, even if the trade off means having to wait a little longer for it."
Nurses are also deeply disappointed that there is no proper early retirement scheme. With increasing numbers of nurses regarding their job as a career, the prospect of a full day on the wards at 60 is daunting.
The final thing nurses need to consider is what they will do if they reject this offer. The Government has repeatedly warned there is no more money. However badly it wants to reward nurses, it cannot concede terms that are blatantly outside the PCW.
Those three initials just won't go away.