Nurses Strike

Will the nurses get their demands (10% pay rise & reduction to 35 hour working week i believe) or will the government dig its heels in?

Is there Public support for the Nurses Unions stance & will it be reduced by threats of work stoppages?

IMO there isn't as much support for nurses as in the past as I seem to remember a strike a few years back with little support.

I can't comment if their claims are valid but the Labour Court did rule that they should have them addressed via Benchmarking. Of course the government has done some other deals outside benchmarking which doesn't help its case.

I can't help feeling the strike is opportunist just before an election.

INO

There is usually good support for Nurses as people know they are hard working. There is a problem that ward assistants, I don't know if that is their correct title who the nurses supervise actually earn more than the nurses. They are fully justified in their actions. The most under paid and over worked proffession in the country.

Here here.
Friend of mine is a nurse.
Always thought she was as tough as nails but her boyfriend tells me she gets very stressed out about work.
Its as if everyday is the busiest day ever in the place and the workload is ridiculous.

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Originally Posted by BohsPartisan

They are fully justified in their actions. The most under paid and over worked proffession in the country.

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Too true.

Fully support the nurses on this one, I have a friend who is a nurse and she's the hardest working human being I've ever encountered, never moans about the conditions they have to work under, but has mentioned their pay on a few occasions

I remember the last Nurses strike & public support vanished once they stopped working.

My only recent experience of a hospital was when father was recovering from heart surgery. The nurses seemed good & professional but no evidence that they rushed off their feet. They appeared to work in shifts & clocked in & out like any other job.

Nurses have got good pay increase through benchmarking already so seems opportunist to be renegating on agreement now they not getting their way. Had a look at the pay rates on the INO website & don't seem to low...

For what its worth can't see the government doing u-turn on wages as would be free for all in the public sector then with every other union queuing up for wages increases outside benchmarking.

Thanks to the nurses who were happy to allow my dad sit in A&E for twelve hours before sending him home at 3am and dragging him back 6 hours later.

While I agree they do deserve more pay for certain duties, I think their action is wrong. They should go through the benchmarking system. There is no way the Government can treat them differently to other public servants. If they do it will be open season. They certainly haven't the same amount of public support they had in previous desputes.

IMO, the problem is that they have been taken advantage of for years because they never resorted to strike and they had a 'vocation'. (It might be a vocation but it is also a job like any other and most nurses now have degrees or equivalent and should be paid as such.) As a result their pay has fallen so far behind that it is hard to see how they can catch up within the benchmarking process.
But as happened before public sympathy will quickly disappear as the work-to-rule goes on.

The thing is they end up after 4 years of insanly hard college / co-op working to get there degree they still end up getting less than a care assistant who can just walk in off the street .

I was listening to lots of people ringing into joe duffy saying things like i work hard in my accountancy job doing similar hours etc etc but in fairness they arent on there feet all day, lifting heavy people in and out of beds and if they make a mistake no one dies !!!

I don't think this is a debate of who has hard or easy job. Lots of people have hard jobs so pointless debate.

I only started this thread as its close to an election & nurses provide vital service where lives can be put at risk if not working. Can we keep the personal comments out of this debate.

If nurses are earning less than care assistants then surely that claim can be handled via Benchmarking? TBH no idea what a care assistant is anyway.

IMO if someone wants a 35 hour working week then should move to France.

10% pay increase is a large amount of money & as I said benchmarking was acceptable when getting large increases in previous years so now its not good enough?

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Originally Posted by pete

My only recent experience of a hospital was when father was recovering from heart surgery. The nurses seemed good & professional but no evidence that they rushed off their feet. They appeared to work in shifts & clocked in & out like any other job.
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i was in hospital recently & by no means were they run off their feet. My 15 month was in hospital and the care was a disgrace. The fact i stayed with her meant the nurses had to do sweet FA, even then trying to get her pain relietf( calpol, your having a laugh) was a drama. caring profession my a$$. Its a job & their holding sick children to ransom, very caring.:mad:

Simple fact is it's such a crap profession for the ones who do care, Ringo, that anymore of the abuse and borderline slavery they have to put up with will end up with us have no-one working there. There is about a 70% drop out rate at the moment and then where will we be if that continues?

I'm involved in this matter closely as my wife's a mid-wife who left the system through bullying and sheer exhaustion. No one in their right minds would question the actions of the honest nurses if they saw her condition when she came home from every shift. As it happens the pay and working hours didn't bother her or her front line collegues in the slightest (obviously they would welcome both but can't see it happening), it's being treated like a slave by the hse and patients/patients visitors/patients relatives that annoy her most. Sometimes when the abuse reached disgusting levels, there might have been a slim chance someone would do something, but other than that they are just chewing gum on the shoes of Mary Harney in her ivory tower and Joe Public. I wrote to the fine example for Health Minister to ask her to come and spend a week on the ward with my missus, free of all the hangers on. One on one if you like. I promise she wouldn't last a morning, but I can assure you I won't get a reply.

Therein lies the problem, the system is riddled with bullying and it starts at the top I'm afraid.

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Originally Posted by pete

I can't help feeling the strike is opportunist just before an election.

INO

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it wouldnt make much sense to have a strike after an election, that would be daft


i think most people are with the nurses, despite all the negative propaganda from the media
why shouldnt they get more money

how much is that ex bus conductor on?

Their pay is comparitve to teachers, gardai & prison officers according to the RTE news last night. looking for 10% and reduction to 35 hours is greedy. How many people on this board work 35 hours? Porters , ambulance drivers & all other health care employees work 39 hours. How many of us can use sick people to force a wage increase out of our employer? they should accept bench marking. if the government give the nurses all they are looking for , the other civil servants will be looking for comparable increases & working hours.

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Originally Posted by bennocelt

it wouldnt make much sense to have a strike after an election, that would be daft


i think most people are with the nurses, despite all the negative propaganda from the media
why shouldnt they get more money

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the rub is that while the nurses may well be deserving of better pay/conditions the manner they are proceeding with their claim is outside the scope of the well established and effective benchmarking body, and could prove to be a watershed victory for public sector unions and precipitate a raft of leapfrogging demands. in my view it's because they feel staunchly entitled to improvements that they feel they can go straight to the top. i think this is poor tactics as if they went through the benchmarking process its likely they would fare just as well, without any of the uncertainty and tension that strikes entail. if we look back to the ASTI dispute six(?) years ago the public at first supported the action however the mood swung on account of the mutinous, gung-ho approach of the ASTI who were adamant they deserved more. like that case when students were hampered coming up to exams there will be public outcry to stop the strike for the sake of patients and their families, and the good work the nurses do will be forgotten about with the role of the respective PR departments becoming paramount with the Government having the added incentive/worry of the election

http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/st...569-qqqx=1.asp

About half of the country’s nurses work family-friendly shifts, with part-time arrangements and flexitime. There are no signs of a breakthrough in the deadlocked nurses’ dispute for more pay and reduced hours, as nurses prepare for an escalation to rolling work stoppages from Wednesday.

In some hospitals, more than half of the nurses enjoys flexible working practices, including part-time, family-friendly, and flexitime rosters, with tens of thousands of nurses working less than the existing 39-hour week.

In the Mater Hospital in Dublin, for example,68 per cent of nurses work part-time, with management running 70 rosters, while in hospitals in the southern region, 42 per cent work less than 39 hours a week.

In the new Cork University Maternity Hospital, 68 per cent of nursing staff work part time.

The most popular roster is a three-day week based on a 12hour shift.

‘‘That level of flexibility cannot continue if you take a huge number of working hours out of the system,” the source said.

its a public relations disaster for them im afraid. whatever the truth about their work, they probably would have had a lot of appreciation and support before the action. holding a gun to loved one's heads and demanding money is not going to be a popular move, and thats how anyone with children or relatives in hospital will view this - a direct threat, or at least negligence toward their loved one's health.

Ringo, I think both you and the SBP are missing the point of the flexible health care rosters in your efforts to put a bad spin on what the nurses are doing.

My wife works in public health care (though not nursing) and the job is very family friendly because the VAST MAJORITY of the people working in her area are women. The reason there are many flexible and family friendly rosters for nurses is not because the management are the kindest of souls but is an industry requirement to incentivise the people with the skills to stay in their posts as their life situation changes. If the HSE was to drive these women back into their homes to look after their families then they will be facing a huge skills shortage. Eventually they will be begging the nurses to take a 35 hour flexible week with pay raises just to get them back.

Of course, that is if one of the countries most inefficient and incompetent management teams ever even notices the pain and suffering they caused to their patients due to not having enough skilled staff.

The SBP is just reporting empty waffle from Harney - who knows damn well that they need the skilled people working in the hospitals. But then that's what the PD's are all about - talking tough for their shrinking handful of rich constituencies.

I’m sorry you had a bad experience last time you were involved with the health care system. I did myself and it was also down to incompetent nursing. But it doesn’t make me want to tar them all with the same brush.

But if you want to focus your ire I’ll tell you a little anecdote which might point you in the direction where the real problem lies.

My missus moved into a brand new section of her hospital a few years back. All mod cons including two new machines at a cost of 250000 euro the pair - to perform a certain type of blood test. Up until the purchase of the machines the test had been outsourced to a private hospital at a cost of 4000 euro per day. A request was duely put in to hire two staff to operate the machines – and this was refused. They are still in their boxes and the hospital is still spending 4 grand a day to get the tests done.

Now, riddle me this.
What kind of board of management would sign a PO for a quarter of a million bucks for machines they knew in advance they would not hire staff to run. Why buy the machines?
Secondly, if your tests cost you 4000 per day to get done, plus you have the machines, and two skilled staff would cost you a maximum of 500 quid per day, is this not the proverbial “no-brainer”.

The only clue I’ll give you in this brain twister is that one of the consultants on the board of management of this public hospital (ie HSE official) is also on the board of management (ie a shareholder) of the private hospital which…. wait for it… does the 4000 grand a day blood tests.




Wowza.

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Originally Posted by GavinZac

its a public relations disaster for them im afraid. whatever the truth about their work, they probably would have had a lot of appreciation and support before the action. holding a gun to loved one's heads and demanding money is not going to be a popular move, and thats how anyone with children or relatives in hospital will view this - a direct threat, or at least negligence toward their loved one's health.

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The patients are at no risk whatsoever, with the work to rule situation they are receiving better care cos the nurses and midwives aren't wasting their time with the admin crap that they should not have to do in the first place.

Vitruvian Man, spot on. Exceptionally well put and the anecdote at the end is happening in a lot more instance than that one.