A chara, - As the phoney war between the Health Service Executive and the two nurses' unions - the Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA) and the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) - builds to the seeming inevitability of a full blown dispute, perhaps you would allow me to apprise your readers of the issues involved.
The PNA/INO lodged a total of eight claims with the employers, all of which were rejected and subsequently referred to the Labour Court. Of those claims, the unions have prioritised two: a 35-hour working week, and redressing the Government-created anomaly by which unqualified social care workers earn over 10 per cent more than the nurses they report to.
The court, in its wisdom, ruled on only two of the eight claims, recommending that nurses should engage in the benchmarking process to have their issues addressed. In its recommendation on the 35-hour-week claim, the court said that the unions should engage in a process with management.
However, 27 years ago that same body, ruling on a similar claim, said that nurses should be among the first to benefit from a reduction in the working week. The managers who tell us we can't have a 35-hour week already enjoy it, as does every other healthcare professional.
As to the public service benchmarking process, the HSE and the Minister, Mary Harney, say this is the only mechanism to deal with nurses, grievances. That is not the case. There are many examples of settlements made above the terms of the public service pay deals and outside the first benchmarking process. Not least of these are the increases of 19 to 27 per cent paid to qualified and unqualified social care workers in 2001 in a deal sanctioned by the present Minister for Education, Mary Hanafin. It is this deal, by these Government parties, which has led to the aforementioned anomaly which means nurses have to be 21 years in practice in a degree profession to reach parity with a grade they supervise.
It seems to nurses to be little short of amazing that the employers can enjoy the working week they do while denying nurses the same terms since 1980 and that a Government which awarded such generous terms to unqualified staff outside benchmarking, thereby itself creating the problem, is unwilling to help resolve it.
Is it any wonder that nurses, as a profession, are angry, and that, as trade union members, they are determined to right what everybody appears to accept are injustices?
Incidentally, the bonus paid to HSE chief executive Prof Drumm last year is equivalent to the third point of a nurse's salary scale, attainable after four years of college and three years' clinical practice. - Yours, etc,
NED LARKIN, National Secretary (Honorary), Psychiatric Nurses' Association, Robertshill, Kilkenny.