A meeting of the Southern Health Board had to be adjourned yesterday when home helps protesting against pay rates of £1.70 an hour disrupted proceedings after the board management failed to give a commitment to meet their union, the ATGWU.
More than 50 home helps from Cork city and county picketed the meeting and, following a suspension of standing orders, two home helps were allowed to address the meeting.
Ms Mary Arrowsmith said the board should say that home helps are worth more than £1.70 an hour and called on the board to give a commitment to open negotiations with the ATGWU.
But the SHB personnel officer, Mr Denis Fenton, told the meeting that SIPTU, not the ATGWU, had sole negotiating rights for non-nursing staff and the matter was currently before the ICTU for resolution. When the SHB chairwoman, Dr Catherine Molloy, indicated the board could not give a commitment to talk to the ATGWU pending the outcome of the ICTU discussions, the home helps began a slow handclap while stamping their feet.
Dr Molloy adjourned the meeting for 10 minutes, but when the board reconvened, the home helps again began a slow handclap and Dr Molloy adjourned the meeting indefinitely. The home helps jeered SHB members as they left with cries of "low pay, no way".
Councillor Con O'Leary, an SHB member, later accused the SHB of using the issue of union representation as means of fobbing off the demands of the home helps. He said he did not believe there was an inter-union rift. "My information from SIPTU is that they are willing to allow the home helps to be represented by the ATGWU. Congress or SIPTU should come out and say that, or else the SHB should provide proof that SIPTU is preventing them from negotiating with the ATGWU."
The SHB later issued a statement saying that 1998 Department of Health funding will allow the SHB to increase the rate of pay to home helps to £2 an hour from July 1st, 1998, leading to a total cost in 1998 to the SHB of £3.7 million.
The board said: "The Southern Health Board has £3.6 million to allocate to the Home Help Service in 1998. If the hourly rate of pay to those who provide the service is increased, the numbers of hours allocated will have to be reduced."