NEARLY 30,000 health sector staff are to ballot on industrial action in protest at employment recruitment restrictions put in place by the Health Service Executive (HSE).
The union Impact said yesterday that the ballot would allow it to engage in industrial action, including strike action, if it considered it useful in its campaign against the restrictions and to force the HSE to respect existing agreements and conditions.
Among the forms of industrial action being considered by Impact are: a refusal to undertake duties associated with vacant posts; a boycott of requests and directives from senior HSE corporate management; a refusal to deal with HSE advisers; a refusal to co- operate with the HSE transformation programme or related matters; withdrawal from partnership groups and processes; a work-to-rule; an overtime ban; work stoppages and other forms of action up to and including strike action.
Impact said any form of industrial action sanctioned would be aimed at minimising the effects on patients and services, while maximising the impact on top HSE management.
It said the precise form of industrial action would be decided after the ballot outcome was known at the end of the month.
Under existing agreements the union would have to give three weeks' notice of industrial action.
The union said staff anger at service shortcomings had come to a head as a result of the HSE's staff-recruitment embargo.
Impact has said that under employment controls put in place by the HSE in January only "critical frontline vacancies" which arose before 2008 could be filled - and then only if other posts which became vacant this year were suppressed.
It had emerged last month that a quarter of occupational therapy posts had disappeared because of the staffing freeze.
The HSE has said that tighter controls were in place to ensure that it stayed within its budget and within official staffing levels.
The union told members in a leaflet yesterday that "bigger cuts in services and staffing" were likely to be imposed in the coming "months and years" unless it acted.
It said there had been no improvement in its relations with the HSE since the Labour Court criticised the health authority earlier this year for failing to consult before implementing its recruitment embargo.
Impact national secretary Kevin Callinan said "the jobs embargo is now totally discredited". He also rejected suggestions that voluntary redundancies would improve public health services.
Responding to reports that up to 1,000 redundancies in administration were being considered, he said the union had neither sought redundancies nor was it approached with any proposals. Talk of redundancy "has nothing to do with better services, it's simply about cutting expenditure".
Impact represents more than 28,000 health workers in the HSE and HSE-funded agencies, including health professionals and therapists, social care workers and administrative and managerial staff.