The Nursing Alliance is to hold a press conference today to announce its stance on the £100 million Labour Court award to its 27,500 members. However, it remained unclear last night if it would be able to agree a joint position.
The executives of the four nursing unions, the Irish Nurses' Organisation, SIPTU, the Psychiatric Nurses' Association of Ireland and IMPACT are meeting before the press conference to make final decisions on their individual positions. Balloting is due to begin on Monday.
The INO is by far the largest union and its executive is understood to be divided on the merits of the package. It may decide to hold the ballot without a recommendation either to reject or accept the terms. All the unions will be conscious of the fact that there is nowhere left to take the dispute except the picket line.
They received little satisfaction when they met the Health Service Employers' Agency yesterday morning. As expected the HSEA refused to reopen negotiations on the problem of pay differentials for the 1,400 public health nurses.
It is understood that the issue of further long-service increments for staff nurses, which had been ruled out by the Labour Court was not raised with the HSEA, or the reporting procedures for nurse managers.
The chief executive of the HSEA, Mr Gerard Barry, had already written to the Nursing Alliance on Wednesday night to inform it that there would be no renegotiation of the Labour Court recommendation. Yesterday, after meeting with the unions, he confirmed that this remained the position.