Talks on pay increases for voluntary-sector health workers collapse

Unions representing thousands of workers in the Government-funded voluntary-care sector are to ballot members on industrial action after talks at the Workplace Relations Commission collapsed on Monday.

Officials from Siptu, Fórsa and the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) left the talks after management representing the Departments of Health and Children as well as the HSE, tabled a pay offer of 5 per cent in what has been a long-running dispute in the sector.

Afterwards, the unions described as the offer as “derisory” and said it fell far short of what was required to bridge a gap with directly employed public sector workers they argue has created a retention crisis in a range of service-providing organisations, many of them charities.

The unions argue many of the workers previously enjoyed parity with people doing similar work in Government organisations but that this was lost 15 years ago during the economic crisis.

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The disparity is said to have grown considerably since as the organisations argued they were not receiving the funding required to match public sector pay restoration and subsequent rises.

The affected workers have been seeking substantial increases to address some of the ground lost and a mechanism to ensure future rises.

Fórsa national secretary Ashley Connolly said the offer of 5 per cent for this year came as a significant disappointment as it fell “far short of the current public service agreement”.

“These are workers providing professional health and social care working shoulder-to-shoulder with their public service counterparts. The employer’s offer suggests they were never that serious about resolving the growing pay disparities and the growing problem of employee retention.

“Any prospect of an agreement was essentially extinguished this morning,” she said.

Maeve Brehony, INMO assistant director of industrial relations, said repeated delays to the talks had left health workers and other service providers in increasingly urgent need of action.

“They haven’t seen a significant pay rise for years, their colleagues are walking out the door for better terms elsewhere, and there appears to be no sense of urgency at Government level, despite the growing waiting lists for the services these agencies offer,” she said.

Kevin Figgis of Siptu described the failure of the talks as “a complete body blow to thousands of healthcare and community workers who had a legitimate expectation that they would be getting a decent pay rise, coupled with the restoration of the pay link between these workers and workers in the public service”.

“There’s more than a 10 per cent pay gap that’s feeding a huge recruitment and retention crisis in these services. The reality is that if this continues, services will be shut down, and the HSE will then have to step in to provide them.”

The Department of Health said it recognised and valued the work performed by the organisations’ staff and said its offer, which included 3 per cent backdated to April, was “in line with those accepted by community and voluntary staff in other sectors”.

“While Government has engaged in this process,” it said, “it is worth noting that Section 39 and Section 56 organisations are privately owned and run, and the terms and conditions of employment for staff in these organisations are ultimately between the employer and the employee.”

Section 39 agencies provide a range of residential and day services for people with disabilities, mental health, addiction, domestic and sexual-violence services, and other supports, under service-level agreements with the HSE. Similarly, Section 56 agencies operate in a similar way for children’s services, funded by Tusla.