Siptu is to mobilise up to 3,000 home help workers as part of a campaign to highlight the threat to jobs after contracts were granted to a private company.
The union’s health division organiser Paul Bell said the HSE and the Department of Health had failed to meet union representatives to discuss concerns over the privatisation of services in Dublin and Wicklow.
“We have been extremely patient since the HSE announced the awarding of a contract for home help services and home care packages to a private ‘for profit’ company almost three weeks ago. It has been claimed that the awarding of the new contract will lead to the creation of 600 new home help positions,” he said.
“Since that announcement, Siptu has been consistently frustrated by the HSE and Department of Health in its attempts to convene a meeting for the purpose of communicating our view that the contract, as awarded, will actually displace home helps in the voluntary sector in Dublin and Wicklow.”
He said Siptu urgently needed to discuss what the HSE and the Government intended to do “in order to secure the employment of our members and the quality of the service which home helps provide to some of the most vulnerable citizens in our community".
