There is a plethora of outstanding claims from the Nursing Alliance that the Labour Court award failed to concede, but these can be narrowed down to four general issues. The foremost, and the one that will be hardest to resolve, is the demand of staff nurses for more long-service increments. This could lead to "knock-on claims" from other grades.
The second is how to bridge the gap between the pay increases conceded by the Labour Court, worth around 10 per cent for most nursing grades, and the alliance claims. The latter vary between 15 per cent and 25 per cent.
The nurses' figures are based on achieving parity with paramedic grades such as physiotherapists, dieticians and social workers. They are also seeking longer holidays, in line with other health service professionals.
The third issue is allowances. Although the Labour Court increased the traditional allowance from £328 a year to between £1,000 and £1,500, the unions believe its application should be wider.
The fourth issue, and the most easily resolved, is the Labour Court recommendation that directors of nursing report in future to general managers within the health services. The managers are at present an equivalent grade in the clerical/administrative section of the health services. While the new reporting procedures make sense in the case of some of the smaller, remoter hospitals, it is seen as a demotion for nurse managers and is bitterly resented by them. As it has no pay implications, this should be easily resolved. The problem is the demand by unions for three new long-service increments of 6 per cent each after nurses have served 16, 19 and 22 years respectively. The aim is to give them a scale matching that of teachers. However, it would be a breach of Partnership 2000 and would lead to teachers, and others, playing catch-up. One possible way around this might be for the nursing unions to convert the 2 per cent local bargaining clause increase due under Partnership 2000 into long-service increments. However, this would require young staff nurses at the bottom of the scale agreeing to forgo an increase in order to fund long-service nurses at the top. This would be an unusual application of Partnership 2000 local bargaining. Until now, the 2 per cent has been used for across-the-board increases by most unions, including IMPACT, which represents the bulk of professional, clerical and administrative grades within the health services. How it would view such an arrangement, not to mention the Department of Finance, is problematic.
Of course, any concession of long-service increments for staff nurses leads on to the issue of conceding higher pay scales to ward sisters and management grades. Paramedics are anxious to preserve their relativities with ward sisters. Nurses, on the other hand, believe staff nurses' pay should reflect that of paramedics and that ward sisters should have parity with the supervisory grades among paramedics. The current salary scale for staff nurses runs from £7.54p to £11.02p an hour. Paramedics earn between £9.46p an hour and £13.55p an hour. The "marker" grade in the clerical administrative section of the health service, Grade V, earns between £10.87p and £12.89p an hour.
Ward sisters earn £13.57p at the top of the scale, but supervisory paramedic grades earn between £15.63p and £17.20p an hour. Paramedics have made it clear that they not only expect to retain existing relativities with ward sisters, but maybe widen them.
Nurses may have better hopes of progress in the area of the working week and holidays. They currently work 39 hours, as opposed to 35 hours for other health professionals, and they have shorter holidays. It might be possible to provide some form of compensation for nurses which would not travel to other grades.
The issue of allowances could also yield benefits to nurses. The fivefold increase awarded by the Labour Court might still leave room for improvement; by either widening eligibility, or amounts. Teachers with a pass degree receive an allowance of £850 a year, those with an honours degree £2,000, and those with a master's £3,000. Many nurses have degrees or equivalent qualifications in the healthcare area. It could be argued that a scheme similar to the teachers' would promote the expertise of nurses and would not automatically transfer to other public service grades.
At the end of the day it is the ability of both sides to agree terms that are specific to nurses and within the terms of social partnership that counts.