Ann Marie Hourihaneresponds to Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as part of a series in association with Amnesty International to mark the 60th anniversary of the declaration
'AND THAT WAS it, the job was mine. That was on the Friday and the following Monday I met the supervising porter at the front gate and introduced myself to him, and he introduced me round and he just basically told me roughly what the job was. He didn't even tell me really what it was, it was just: 'You'll be working round the porters.' And I got no contract, signed no contract, signed nothing, did no, no, no terms nor nothing. Never. Never signed a contract. I wasn't even vetted by the police. Which is a regulation, which is a requirement that they have to do because you could be any sort of criminal, or any sort of maniac, yeah.
And I was working there I'd say near enough to a year before they brought down this form to me to fill in. So I was probably working there about 11 months, near enough to that, before they even got me to fill in the form. So I could have been Jack the Ripper for all they knew. But that's acceptable practice anyways. That's normal. And I started in there, in a big hospital, and I worked in there and my title was Relief Shift Porter.
It was a doddle, like. You see a lot of the lads, a lot of the porters, there were a lot of porters up there, well maybe 20 porters. In my view they were overstaffed. A lot of them, a lot of the older, the senior porters - which is what they like to call themselves - went in and did about, in an eight-hour day, they worked about an hour in the whole eight hours and they sat on their backsides for the rest of the day. Watching the football and putting on bets.
I could do a whole day's work in an hour. First thing I did was take a trolley full of laundry up to the ward. Then I'd take a trolley full of dirty laundry down from the ward to the laundry. Then I'd take a trolley full of food up to one ward, and bring that trolley back down. In the afternoon I'd bring up one trolley from the laundry again. Some porters only did that. The privileged porters did just that. Unless they were stuck. The new porters did the laundry, the slop, the patients, the lot. They got the younger, newer fellas to do all the dirty work. They were like kings. Good amount of money, all the overtime.
So you're talking about a lot of money when you added in the overtime and the allowances. The basic wasn't that strong. But then when you thrung [ sic] in your allowances, your overtime, your Bank Holiday allowance, your Sunday allowance, your night-shift allowance, it was high. That's where an awful lot of trouble developed.
There were 20 or 22 porters and a hard core of about six porters. They were referred to as the senior porters but some of them were only a wet day in the place. The management left the porters' department alone. If a young porter came into the hospital and wanted a share of the overtime, or even wanted a share of, of, what would you call it, the luxury time, the easy time, easy street, you know, you're not going to share the easy street, the senior guys . . . now when I say the senior guys, like that again it's very perceptible. Like that, as I was saying to you, it's who you know. One or two of these guys were only in the hospital for a year but because they were friends with some of the senior porters, they were classed as being senior.
So like that again, you got your privileges depending on who you were friends with. You know. So if some of the young fellas were looking for a bit of overtime, or looking to enjoy a bit of the luxury, the easy time, like us all, we all want the easy job, to be there watching television, like everyone else, you know. Then these older guys would attack these young fellas, abuse them. Call them names. If a person had a deformity, or if, if they had a disability, or if they had some sort of quirk, or mannerism. And for them being a woman was deformity, being black was a deformity.
Give you an example. There was one fella who walked like John Travolta. Great walk. He strutted, right? He was only a young fella. He's probably out of nappies now, he hadn't experienced life at all. But all the women loved him and stuff like that. But a good worker. A good worker, nice man - but he had this walk on him. He got into fierce trouble. They'd tell everyone he was queer and they'd be plastering his private affairs all over. He had to be eliminated. His professional reputation had to be eliminated. That was the norm. It happened many, many people. We were told people were going to work in other parts of the health service.
There were periods of stability and common sense when the head porter was out sick. Then he'd return and there'd be chaos. He ran the department through this gang of heavies. There was no training. They were doing it blindfolded. There was a lot of inconsideration, a lot of roughness with patients.
If he wasn't out sick, the head porter would go and do the post. That was the only time I'd see him. He'd come in about nine, nine-thirty, to issue a few preliminary instructions and to have a shower and doll himself up. He was the most groomed person I ever seen. He'd deliver the post round town then and be back around four. He'd be back at lunch as well for about an hour. So, back round four, just as everyone was leaving.
There was a new unit to be opened which was dependent on the porters. The porters were up in arms with this being built.
They were up in arms. In order to pacify them, the management had to have a number of meetings to try and coerce their co-operation. In the course of the meetings a commitment was given that the porters would get first call on any new jobs in the new unit. I think this is highly improper. Jobs should go to the best people.
The new unit brought in its own staff. But they couldn't get their post. At the time I was responsible for delivering the post all over the hospital. I was approached about delivering post to the new unit and I said, 'No problem, it's my job.' There was an internal convulsion, an internal rebellion against the management. Against the new unit. They came to me, the union people. I was a porter, so it was the porter reps. Three of them came and pulled me offside and said they had instructions from the trade union headquarters not to supply any services to the new unit. That the management had broken the agreement with the union and I was to have no dealings with the new unit.
The hospital administrator blew a fuse. She said the union people were terrorists, which I fully agreed with. But in fact union headquarters had never said any such thing. It was a lie. It was a minefield. Certain workers ran, they ran that hospital. They behaved as if they were management. It was a case of the tail wagging the dog.
Even doing your legitimate job, it was a cushy number. You never came out of it tired. I work now. I come home and say 'I'm tired', because I'm working now. But over the next five months it started. I listed 14 incidents of bullying in five months.
And I wasn't the only one. Other porters, they were killed, they were eliminated. Those fellas were cowards. All it takes is one manager to stand up to them, but management wouldn't do it. They gave me a copy of some anti-bullying policy to read . . .
For about nine months it was okay. There was some bullying but I wasn't naive. I didn't attempt to improve myself financially. They were denying me overtime. They were trying to isolate me. They'd say to me: 'Don't park your car there.' It was so senseless. My wages had shot down.
I was prevented from getting into the hospital. I had to drive round the back. One time I'd had to go out to the post office and I was coming back. There was a woman behind me at the gate and they had to get her to pull back her car, so I could reverse back, away from the entrance. Nine months later I resigned verbally and I told the dole office. That evening I got a call from Jonnie, the union rep, and he said 'We'll get it all fixed. Don't resign, go out sick.' So I went out sick with depression.
I had been threatened and told that I would never get overtime, over my dead body.
I went back to work and I was told there was to be a meeting to discuss my situation. It was at that meeting that I was assaulted by another porter. He just came at me.
I could feel all his power coming through his belly. Then he pushed me back and said he was going to throw me out the window. Several people were there, and they were really shocked.
But nothing happened. I waited months and months and months. The meeting was in November. The hospital manager, the supervisor, Jonnie from the union, your man from personnel. Your man from personnel tried to excuse what had happened.
The big guy, the chief porter, wasn't even questioned until six months later. That was over two men prior to me, who he bullied because he thought that they were homosexual.
In the health service you either keep quiet or speak up and lose your job."
ARTICLE 23
1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for themselves and their family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of their interests.
• Ann Marie Hourihane will take part in The Irish Times/Amnesty readings today at Electric Picnic, along with Roddy Doyle, Hugo Hamilton and Kevin Barry. These readings will run from 4pm to 5.30pm in the Leviathan Marquee. Tomorrow between 4.30pm and 6pm Anne Enright, Claire Keegan, Glenn Patterson and Mark O'Halloran, will read their work. On both days the readings will be followed by a panel discussion hosted by Hugh Linehan of The Irish Times
• This is one of a series of 30 stories and essays by leading writers marking the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The series was created by Sean Love for Amnesty International and continues next Saturday