The State's 3,000 non-consultant hospital doctors (NCHDs) are balloting for industrial action in pursuit of a pay claim. The Irish Medical Organisation is to begin the ballot immediately and expects an overwhelming mandate for a strike when voting ends on April 10th.
Meanwhile, talks have begun at the Labour Relations Commission to avert next week's strike by 16,000 IMPACT members in the health services. The grades concerned include paramedics, social workers, and clerical and administrative staff.
The dispute is over a long-running claim for temporary and part-time health service employees. IMPACT is planning the first of a series of strikes on March 22nd. Student nurses are planning a walkout on the same day in protest at being the only group of third-level students required to pay fees for degree courses.
The earliest likely date for action by the hospital doctors is April 17th. There appears little basis for a compromise between the IMO and the Health Service Employers' Agency.
The key issue in dispute is overtime. Dr Asim Ishtiaq, a member of the IMO's NCHD committee, said yesterday that existing overtime structures were "ancient".
"As we know, after 5 p.m., it is the NCHDs who are staffing hospitals. They are only being paid half the rate for most of their overtime," he said.
Under the existing regime NCHDs have a basic 39-hour week and are not supposed to work more than 27 hours' overtime. However only half of this overtime is paid at the top rate of time-and-a-quarter and the remainder is at half the basic rate of pay.
According to the IMO many NCHDs are working more than 65 hours routinely and are not being paid anything for the extra time.
Dr Ishtiaq said overtime was rising because of the increased demand on health services. To maintain a cap of 65 hours on the working week, NCHDs should not be rostered on call more than one night in five, but in most hospitals the ratio was one night in three or four.
The HSEA has offered to discuss overtime after the completion of a study by PA Consulting at the end of June. It says that the IMO wants large across-the-board increases in overtime payments but is not prepared to consider the introduction of shift premiums or on-call payments to meet some situations.
HSEA negotiators claim that some registrars in major acute hospitals are earning £20,000 a year overtime on top of basic salary scales of £25,000 to £38,000 under the existing system.
The IMO's director of industrial relations, Mr Fintan Hourihan, said that if the HSEA had such detailed costings available already, it did not need another consultancy study. He accused the employers of delaying tactics.