Thousands of HSE employees including nurses, others healthcare workers and administrative staff have voted to take industrial action over staffing levels across the health service.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, Fórsa and Unite represent more than 80,000 HSE staff between them, and ballots of those workers in recent weeks all returned substantial majorities in favour of action, up to and including strikes, over the HSE’s programme for managing staff costs.
The respective union leaderships are set to meet over the coming week with a view to deciding on how to proceed, after which three weeks’ notice of any action would be required. The votes raise the prospect of serious disruption to services early in the new year.
“The INMO executive council, made up of working nurses and midwives, will now consider this outcome,” said its general secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha, as that union announced more than 96 per cent of members who had participated in the ballot had voted in favour of action.
“Over the next two weeks we will liaise with other health sector trade unions who have balloted their members to decide on a united approach. Our members are often the first point of contact many sick people have with the public health system. In turn they have to bear the brunt of the public’s rightful frustration with the overcrowding crisis and long waiting lists that are exacerbated by short staffing.
“One of the first priorities of the next government must be to solve the staffing issues that exist right across the public sector,” she said.
The outcome of the ballot conducted by Fórsa, which has about 40,000 members working for the HSE across a wide range of roles and grades, was similarly comprehensive, with 93.6 per cent of votes cast in favour of taking action.
“Waiting lists continue to grow, and it’s having a damaging effect on the morale of our members who continue to deliver services,” said Ashley Connolly, head of Fórsa’s health and welfare division. “They cannot operate indefinitely in circumstances where demand outstrips capacity. The HSE and the Department of Health need to wake up to that challenge. It can’t continue this way.”
Unite said the outcome of its ballot had also been “overwhelming”.
Another union, Connect, which represents many craft workers, including electricians and plumbers across the health service, is due to announce the outcome of a similar ballot in coming days, while the organisation representing medical scientists, who conducts key lab tests, has announced it will also ballot its members.
The issue at stake is the limits placed by the HSE on spending on staff pay. Having dropped its previous freeze on hiring in many areas the unions say the executive’s Pay and Numbers Strategy effectively places new restrictions on hiring, albeit with senior managers having some flexibility regarding how they allocate resources. The unions also argue many existing posts that were vacant on December 31st of last year were effectively lost.
“After the HSE claimed that it had lifted its recruitment ban it emerged that vacancies are being benchmarked against the 2024 headcount, with the result that any vacancies unfilled in 2023 have effectively been lost to the health service,” said Unite on Wednesday.
The HSE, however, argues its staff numbers have never been higher, recruitment in key areas continues and costs have to be controlled. Talks between the two sides over a number of months failed to resolve the differences.
A revised Pay and Numbers Strategy would be expected to be published in the new year although the current only came in June.
Despite the current restrictions, total staff numbers at the HSE have increased substantially since 2020 when the current Government took power. Stephen Donnelly put the increase at 26,000 earlier in the year and it is now understood to be almost 28,000, an increase of almost a quarter. The unions, however, claim Ireland’s ageing and expanding population, combined with historically lower levels on spending on healthcare, mean further investment, and hiring, is required.
The HSE said it will consider the results of the union ballots in the context of the Public Service Agreement, once it receives detail on the type of action proposed. The executive, it added, engages with all trade unions to resolve issues, and will continue to do so, utilising the industrial relations mechanisms of the state if required.
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