Fair enough. So your argument seems to be that you recognise a)that the market rate would be higher (As people are leaving) And b) that they are actually deserving of a pay rise for the work they do but that âour hands are tied.â
(Because of reciprocal pay claims).
Surely then you should be advocating for a change to that system and that benchmarking unions off one another should be broken up.if a system is broken surely it should be fixed? Instead youâre quite happy to stick your fingers in your ears shouting about fiscal responsibility. Meanwhile FG tyro Simon Harris has signed off on a nice little half mill report for PWC to look into the hospital overspend but he specifically states there can be no apportioning of responsibility. And you think there is no incompetence.
By the way a billion euro would get you a thousand extra nurses for 20 years at 50grand a head. It would make a fair donât in the shit heap donât you think.
You followed up my points to say to go find some stats and that there were different types of nurses. You said nurses are fleeing to Australia, you need to back that up with a rounded argument.
Your posts are based on emotion and a serious lack of thinking. You seem to be under the delusion that only you get nurses and the rest of us donât. Youâll note I never said that had it easy and I didnât even say they shouldnât get a pay rise. I simply said;
the nurses are fleeing to Australia and leaving the profession, never to return, has to have some basis in fact.
people go abroad for a variety of reasons. The âphenomenonâ of Student Nurses going abroad is not solely attributable to money.
actual like for like comparisons with other countries and an appreciation of relative payscales and tax has to be taken into account.
issues on staffing look more so to do with the decision to move staff to office jobs. The numbers should support the system.
I said there potentially could be an argument. i havenât seen the argument proven yet but to my mind not being able to fill positions or retain staff is one of the few rational reasons across any company/industry to significantly review pay/conditions.
The flip side applies though, if there are multiple qualified applicants or if external market conditions change then pay should be reviewed down as well.
Unions canât have it both ways. Market forces when it suits and then ignored when it doesnât.
Capital spending is different to current spending and this strike has absolutely nothing to do with the Childrenâs hospital (which I agree has serious questions to answer) so please donât throw that straw man out again.
Can you answer my two questions:
Do you think the other unions owe a duty to the nurses to come out and say they wonât look for âme tooâ payments if the gov do a deal? If not why not?
Do you think itâs reasonable for a union that has signed up to a pay deal that the gov agreed to in good faith then turns around and reneges on that? Why agree any deal?
No. Duties are to their members, why would they have a duty to come out and say any such thing?
Your second point is valid. But the nurses maintain that circumstances have changed significantly and thatâs a strong argument.
On the argument that they canât give the nurses a pay raise even if they deserve it because then everyone else will want one, thatâs not really a very good argument at all. It amounts to a defence of a broken system.
Because theyâll be laughed at/scorned? All professions arent equal, nurses and frontline medical staff add real value and service to society, more than any other sector, the public health system is third world, yes thatâs through financial mismanagement for a long time at the upper echelons but not the frontlines fault. This has created conditions where theres a huge incentive to work in a modern, well paid less pressurized health system like Australia. A pay rise to the lower level is a way of addressing that. The real solution is tie it to a 3 year return of service for the education/training that got them there, a lot will put down roots or get poled in coppers, increasing the chances they will stay, if they donât you get some work out of them at least. Colin Fennellys comments about literally doing fuck all all day every day in the armed forces is an eye opener. No need to sustain those numbers in a neutral country and no parity there with nurses.
Fair enough about duty being to their members but it makes their âsupportâ for the nurses even more cynical. Theyâre hoping the nurses crack the Gov and the other pour through.
How is it a strong argument that circumstances have changed significantly in less than 18 months? The INMO members voted overwhelmingly in Sep 2017 for the deal. Most of what has happened since then is that Brexit and other macro-economic trends have led observer after observer to caution the gov for excessive public spending.
Itâs a vocation from what Iâve experienced be it in a hospice or A and E- they work like hell put up with constant moaning-Christmas time with their families v unusual-deal with drunks and druggies all of the time - pay them,cut the double jobbers/ double pensions up in Leinster House,disband our house of lords
Yep but the problem is that the politicians would give themselves a 5k pay rise and then turn around and say to nurses that there is no money to increase your pay. So if politicians want to stop these strikes they have to cut their own pay and also look a reducing the cost of living in the country. If they did this they would take the ammunition away from Nurses, Gardai, etc.
Doesnât TDâs pay increase because civil servants pay increases as part of the Public Sector Agreement - the same agreement that increased pay for nurses at a similar rate too?
Yes. TDs are paid in line with Principal Officers in the Civil service. POs are usually the third highest rung of management and run a division i.e. HR, IT. So if a POs pay goes up, so does that of a TD.
As I see it, the nurses have some degree of credibility to their case if their main issue is retention of staff, the fact that we have a number of universities churning out graduates and the existing hospital network are on a constant recruitment drive must speak to a degree of non-retention.
A large part of the problem in the HSE is the insufficiency of bed numbers, there is simply not enough to go around. Throw bed blockers into the mix and its a disaster waiting to happen. Irelands population is getting older and no matter how many step down services and out patient services you provide, you will always need a certain number of hospital beds, which we donât have. Most of the issues like people on trolleys and waiting lists are contributed to in no small part by the lack of sufficient bed numbers. To have these beds, you must staff with nurses. Nurses would suck up the poor pay if they werenât getting berated by drunken eejits every weekend (in the case of A&E) or roared at by anxious relatives who are expressing frustration (nearly every other dept). To retain these nurses at the moment, you need to increase their pay, then you might stand a chance of increasing bed numbers, provided our government see fit to increase bed numbers. In many cases, they can do this by retro-fitting existing hospitals (eg Nenagh, St Johns, Ennis to use Mid West examples). However, the argument is then made that its cheaper to build new⌠Possibly it is, if the hospitals were actually built for the initial tendering price and not some back of the matchbox style calculation as per the childrens hospital, which the builder keeps upping.
There was a lad on the radio this morning who argued that an adult hospital should be built in the hole in the ground at st Jamesâs, to replace current hospitals that are practically obsolete. And the childrenâs hospital should go out to Blanchardstown where thereâs loads of space for it. I found myself nodding along in agreement. It would upgrade the hospital network as a whole, increase the number of beds, and allow greater space for the NCH to be developed (which would mean it would cost less).
Investing in infrastructure, bed numbers, and proper staffing would go a long way to addressing the conditions the nurses work under and the numbers leaving.
