Nurses' Industrial Action Escalates Into Work Stoppages

The Irish Nurses Organisation and Psychiatric Nurses Association announced that their current campaign of action, which involves a nationwide work to rule, will escalate on Wednesday when the first of a series of short rolling work stoppages will take place.

On that day work stoppages will be carried out between 11am and 12 noon at three hospitals, though all essential andemergency nursing services will be maintained.

During these stoppages both unions will exempt a number of their members to ensure all essential and emergency nursing care is provided at a level similiar to that available at night. 

In addition critical care areas will also be maintained so that all patients availing of such critical services, receive all the care that is required.

The work stoppage will, however, disrupt elective services scheduled to take place during the one hour withdrawal.

Both unions stressed that the escalation will go ahead in the absence of further negotiations with regard to their priority issues including a 35-hour week and the elimination of a pay anomaly.

INO General Secretary Liam Doran emphasised the overwhelming support of his members for the industrial action, saying, "This is the latest phase of our campaign, which received a 98% endorsement, from our members and it is being designed, through its duration, to minimise the disruption to patients.

Seamus Murphy, of the PNA, said, "Our preference is to be negotiating how to make progress on these issues.  However the resolve of our members remains absolute and the threats and innuendo, coming from the management side, are only serving to undermine the long term relationship which will exist between our members and senior managers, in the health service.

"It should be recalled that all of these senior managers, only two years ago, also took industrial action, in the form of a nationwide work to rule, in pursuance of their interests".

The unions are also being supported by patients' rights group Patients Together who voiced their support for the nurses, and rejected claims from the Health Services Executive that patients' lives were being threatened by the action.

A spokesperson for the group told reporters that "The calls that I have gotten since the nurses started the work-to-rule have been the same calls that I would get on a daily basis anyway with the health crisis. It's going to be very hard for nurses to hurt the patient any more than they're already being hurt in the system."