Nurses' Unions To Introduce Overtime Ban

The current industrial action by nurses and midwives across Ireland escalated on Monday after unions confirmed that they are banning overtime by their members from Friday in response to the Health Service Executive's threat to cut 13.16% from the salaries of all those taking part in the nationwide work-to-rule.

Both the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) and the Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA) have told their 45,000 members to work only contracted hours.

Union members have been instructed not to work overtime or provide additional shifts on an agency basis stepping up their campaign for a 10.6% pay rise and a 35-hour working week.

INO President, Madeline Spiers said, "The HSE's decision to deduct pay and demand that nurses and midwives comply strictly with their contract has provoked a response which will ensure that they will do no more than their contracted hours."

"Perhaps now HSE will come to realise just how much frontline services are dependent upon the goodwill of nurses and midwives who fill in the gaps arising from the rigidly imposed government staff ceiling."

For over a month now, hospitals have also been hit by weekly rolling work stoppages and they are now preparing for a nationwide walkout on Wednesday, when nursing staff leave their wards for two hours in every medical facility in the county.

However, it is expected the overtime ban will have the most major impact across all services.

"PNA have advocated full employment as an alternative to excessive overtime and the employers failure to heed that call has led to an over-reliance on overtime in psychiatric services," Des Kavanagh, the General Secretary of the PNA said.

"The chronic under-resourcing of mental health services will now come back to haunt the HSE for their mismanagement."

In the most recent action, around 1,000 nurses and midwives staged three-hour work stoppages at health facilities in Dublin, Kildare and Sligo affecting almost 330 procedures.

Gerry Dwyer, who is in charge of the HSE's National Incident Centre for the dispute, said that the escalation raised the possibility that patients are put at risk but noted that "We're certainly doing our best within the resources we have."

"We have people running all around every hospital in the country relaying messages, getting messages backwards and forwards, checking answering machines, doing whatever is humanly possible."