THE Labour Relations Commission was prepared to produce a settlement formula to the paramedics' dispute last weekend, according to reliable sources. But it could not do so because there was no indication from the management side that the terms would be acceptable to the Department of Finance.
The LRC can put forward proposals only if both sides in a dispute are prepared to accept, or in the case of a union, recommend to its members the settlement formula. The commission appears to have been operating under tighter constraints than when it settled the two ambulance drivers' disputes during the previous weekend.
As the accompanying table shows, the £87 million settlement to nurses put ward sisters and, in some cases, staff nurses ahead of most comparable paramedic grades. The only paramedic grade where salaries are substantially ahead of nurses and other paramedics - is biochemists, who are overwhelmingly male.
In contrast, the traditionally militant ambulance drivers' dispute was relatively easy to settle. But their claim was not linked with the nurses' settlement or with wide groups like prison officers and gardai.
IMPACT's paramedics provide a potential bridge between the "uniqueness" of the nurses' £87 million settlement and wider groups of public service workers.
That is why management is trying to make the union forgo its claim to pay parity with the nurses, as an essential prelude to talks on pay. Management wants increases negotiated purely on the basis of increased productivity and changes in work practices that paramedics are prepared to give.
The irony of the situation is that paramedics are as willing as nurses, if not more so, to concede, productivity. But they will not give up the pay link.
There are good reasons for not doing so, argues IMPACT general secretary Mr Peter McLoone. Yesterday he produced a letter dated March 5th, 1991, from Mr Kevin Murphy, Secretary for Public Service Management and Development at the Department of Finance, to the general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Mr Peter Cassells, This accepted that such groups as paramedics, who are linked with grades including nurses for pay purposes, could be asked to surrender that link only voluntarily.
Refusal to do so could not be used to block talks on local productivity bargaining under the Programme for Competitiveness and Work, or the Programme for Economic and Social Progress.
Mr McLoone said that the only public defence health employers were putting up for refusing to negotiate on the basis of pay parity with the nurses was that the restructuring clause of the PCW was designed to break pay links in the public service. The letter showed IMPACT's stance was justified.