Anyone requiring emergency treatment over the coming days should continue to call for an ambulance as normal, the HSE has said in advance of the start of industrial action by National Ambulance Service (NAS) personnel on Monday.
About 2,000 members of Siptu and Unite are to start a work-to-rule from 8am on Monday, with a 24-hour strike then set to start over the course of Monday night.
Emergency cover has been agreed with the unions but NAS’s ability to respond to calls will be “significantly impacted”, the HSE said. Those with less serious health issues or concerns are advised to use emergency departments, injury units, GP out-of-hours services and pharmacies.
The dispute relates to the implementation of widespread changes to staffing and work practices as part of a modernisation programme.
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The staff, mostly emergency medical technicians, paramedics and advanced paramedics, have twice rejected, by big margins, proposals to resolve the situation, most recently in September, when 70 per cent of those who participated in the ballot voted against terms put forward by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC). Both unions recommended acceptance on that occasion.
The HSE says the deal put to staff by the unions last year would have involved pay increases of between 3 per cent and 14 per cent, on top of the increases all public sector workers received under the terms of the national public sector pay deal.
“The HSE and Government accepts the need to both increase and modernise pay arrangements for our staff working in the NAS,” it said, “but is also obliged to ensure that in exchange for significant increases in pay, our services can continue to transform to meet the needs of the public”.
Staff have said the offer on pay does not adequately reflect the scale of the changes to staffing while there are said to be reservations regarding safety aspects of some of the changes themselves. This has been rejected by the HSE.
John McCamley of Siptu said the nature of work in the NAS has been transformed in recent years, with more qualified staff doing far more to administer care and save lives before people are brought to hospital, and that this has been fully recognised by management.
Eoin Drummey of Unite said management at the NAS and HSE “still have it in their power to ensure this action doesn’t go ahead”, but he said there had been no serious attempt to negotiate since notice of the strike action was served a month ago.
Asked about the fact the unions had recommended the settlement terms put forward by the WRC and Labour Court, he said the unions were democratic organisations “and it was the right of members to reject the terms on the basis that they didn’t believe they went far enough”.
The HSE has called on the unions to cancel the action and engage again through the State’s industrial relations mechanisms.
