Up to 4,000 temporary nurses will benefit from a new agreement that will recognise past service for incremental purposes. The Irish Nurses' Organisation estimates that more than 1,000 of these nurses will receive immediate pay increases of up to £95 a week. The initiative is one of several being pursued to counteract the increasing drain of staff nurses from the health services and attract back older nurses. Until now nurses working in a temporary capacity could not advance beyond the fifth point of the staff nurses' nine-point scale. Nurses returning to the workforce had to start at the bottom of the scale, regardless of previous experience or qualifications.
Under the new system the incremental ceiling for temporary nurses has been lifted from the fifth to the eighth point of the scale. It will be raised to the ninth point next year.
The award results from a test case taken to the Labour Court by the INO. Yesterday the union's director of industrial relations, Mr David Hughes, said that it was "delighted to finally close the chapter on this 20-year claim for full incremental credit for temporary nurses. The previous practice amounted to one of the meanest forms of exploitation of nurses."
The largest pay rises will go to temporary nurses with seven or more years previous service. From now on they will be paid on the eighth point of the scale, at £20,041 instead of the current starting point worth £15,074. Service in other EU countries, North America, Australasia and the Middle East is recognised for incremental purposes. "Given the current severe shortage of nurses, this award will make it worthwhile for them to re-enter the workforce," Mr Hughes said.
The award has also been welcomed by SIPTU. Its nursing official, Mr Oliver MacDonagh, said yesterday that about 10 per cent of SIPTU's 10,000 members are temporary nurses. His union has proposed a partnership forum in the North-Eastern Health Board to examine job share contracts and other measures to make nursing more family friendly.
Negotiations are due to begin shortly between the nursing unions and the Health Service Employers' Agency on the creation of permanent part-time working posts for nurses in the health services. So are negotiations on the conversion of 1,000 temporary posts to permanent ones. Both have been delayed by the opening of talks on new structures for ward sisters.