Unions representing more than 80,000 HSE staff are to serve notice of industrial action on Monday with what is likely to be an initial work-to-rule set to get under way on Monday, March 31st.
In letters to members on Thursday, the two biggest unions involved in the dispute, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) and Fórsa, said the precise nature of the action would be announced after the weekend.
They said other unions including Connect, which represents craft workers, and the Medical Laboratory Scientists Association would also serve the required three weeks’ notice of their intention to take action on the organisation.
The dispute is focused on staffing levels across the health service, and the setting last year of a ceiling on total pay and staff numbers. The unions contend the limits set out are not adequate given the service’s overall needs, and argue that many existing posts vacant at the end of 2023 were effectively “suppressed” due to the arbitrary manner of the process.
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The HSE says its staff numbers have never been higher, that the equivalent of 29,000 full-time staff have been added to its workforce since the start of 2020, recruitment in key areas continues and costs have to be controlled. Talks between the two sides over a number of months last year failed to resolve the differences.
In their messages to members on Thursday the INMO and Fórsa said they had established local organising committees in regions across the country in recent weeks and these would help to assess vacancy numbers and the scale of staff shortages because, they said, the HSE had refused to do so.
“The HSE have consistently refused to engage with us on the pay and numbers strategy,” said Fórsa, in a letter signed by senior officials Ashley Connolly and Linda Kelly.
In the letter to nurses and midwives, INMO general secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha said: “We have consistently tried to avoid the need for industrial action, advocating instead for a structured, agreed and negotiated workforce plan for our members which ensures they have safe staffing levels matching activity – these calls have been ignored.”
In a statement the HSE said “any industrial action is seriously disruptive to the provision of services to service users and will lead to increased delays and longer waiting lists. The HSE will seek in every way possible to have this action avoided.”
It also said it believes any industrial action would be “a breach of the provisions of the public service agreement, which is signed up to, and which they are full beneficiaries of, by all of the unions concerned”.
