Nurses' strike not just about money
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Fianna Fáil ministers have forgotten about their initial refusal to attend Labour Court hearing in 1998 and their reneging on agreements made in 1997
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BY ROBBIE MacGABHANN
The rush to the moral high ground is not something you would expect from a Fianna Fáil government in the 1990s, but three of its most senior ministers have over the past few weeks been trying to convince the Irish public that this is the position they command. At the same time, they have been portraying the state's 28,000 nurses as the barbarians at the gate trying to break into the state's coffers and robbing the funds being hoarded for the poor.
The tactics employed by Fianna Fáil have driven the nurses' unions into overdrive and they are now displaying an unprecedented level of militancy for a section of the workforce new to active trade unionism. The Irish Nurses Organisation is going only 11 years as a union.
Now the nurses have voted by a margin of nine to one in favour of taking all-out industrial action from 19 October. This follows on from their vote last month, also by a margin of nine to one, which rejected a £60 million pound pay rise.
At its most simple level, the nurses' dispute with the government, their real employers, is about money. The current nurses' total annual wage bill is £665 million. They want wage increases of £150 million. They have been offered a package estimated to be worth £100 million.
In terms of individual grades, the Labour Court recommendation proposes increasing ward sisters' wages from £20,023 annually to £27,522. The unions want a further £7,000 annually. The Health Services Employer Agency says that with allowances and shift payments ward sisters can earn up to £32,000 a year.
Staff nurses were earning £17,747 annually. Under the Labour Court recommendation, they would get £22,339. The unions want £4,000 more. The HSEA says that with overtime, which 80% of nurses do, it is possible to earn £27,000 annually. To earn this income, nurses would have to be working longer shifts with night and weekend work.
The seeds of this dispute go back much further than last month's Labour Court findings. In February 1997, the nurses unions called off a strike only when they were offered an £85 million interim settlement. There was also the promise that a Commission on Nursing would be established, which would analyse the profession as a whole while also providing for further reviews in pay.
Nurses had been complaining at the lack of a career structure in the profession as well as a rake of grievances about working conditions, responsibilities, the need for degree level qualifications and more training for new medical technologies being introduced into the health service.
The Commission reported in September 1998, with 200 recommendations. The HSEA claimed that it would cost them a further £200 million to meet the cost of the recommendations of the Commission.
It was back to the Labour Court then in 1998. This time, though, the Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrat coalition initially refused to attend the Labour Court hearings, breaching the agreement they had made with the unions in 1997.
It was then that many nurses realised that the recommendations in the Commission on Nursing would never be delivered in full and that the only route open to them other than surrender would be to take industrial action.
Now we have Fianna Fáil ministers who have forgotten about their initial refusal to attend the Labour Court hearing in 1998 and their reneging on agreements made in 1997.
Bertie Ahern though, has chosen to lecture the nurses about ``not honouring commitments''. He said he ``was only acting in the interests of all our people'' by rejecting the nurses' wage claims. He said if the government paid off the nurses it would ``unleash a wave of follow on claims''.
However in December 1997 Ahern seemed not to apply this logic to the wage claims of TDs. Deputies, who were then earning £34,000 a year, were being offered a £10,000 wage rise.
Justifying the wage increase, Ahern said: ``I honestly believe that in this day and age it is not fair to ask TDs to work six days a week and work damn hard for £34,000... I really do think that politicians are underpaid.''
Ahern's logic is that TDs' wage increases will not spark off a wave of wage claims even though, like nurses, their wages are pegged with other public sector workers. He also believes that a job that requires no formal qualifications should be better paid than one whose responsibilities are a matter of life and death.
Charlie McCreevy has called the nurses claim jumpers, saying that their wage claim would be ``unfair on the rest of the community. Health minister Brian Cowen has threatened that if the wage increase is paid it would lead to cutbacks in the health services.
So here we are, counting the days to all out strike action, with neither side willing yet to pull back. The Dublin government has applied an unfair double standard to this dispute by making threats and emotional appeals about the public interest while reneging on their own commitments.
The nurses, for their part are, like the Gardaí, relatively new to militant trade unionism. Like the Gardaí, they have yet to face up to the fact that the strength of the trade union movement lies in improving the lot of all workers. At this stage though, the balance of right is definitely on the side of the nurses.
To low paid workers, the wages nurses will earn seem high. In this context they are. However in the context of the professions of which nurses are a part, their earnings are relatively low, especially considering the difficult conditions in which they work.
Ultimately, nurses should be seeking to align themselves more clearly with all public sector workers in ensuring that a just wage is delivered to all workers, whether they are the cleaners and porters in a hospital or the managers. The nurses have the power to take this step.
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