THE Irish Nurses' Organisation has decided to ballot its members in more than 140 hospitals throughout the country on strike action. Its council says that, as in past disputes, emergency cover will be provided if strike action does take place.
The main objectives of a strike would include the renegotiation of staff nurses pay and better terms for early retirement.
Nursing members of IMPACT, who also rejected the Government's latest £50 million package, are to consider industrial action. A consultative meeting of IMPACT nurses took place last night and it is expected to request a mandate for a strike ballot from the union executive.
Representatives of the two unions which voted to accept the Government offer, SIPTU and the Psychiatric Nurses Association, are to meet the INO and IMPACT today to seek a common strategy in the event of a strike.
The INO will hold a series of branch meetings from December 6th until January 10th at which the ballot will be conducted.
If the INO achieves the necessary two thirds majority needed to sanction strike action, it will begin on February 10th. The long lead in is to allow SIPTU and the PNA to ballot their members on what form of supportive action they would be prepared to take. However in many hospitals the INO, which is by far the largest union, will be able to close services on its own.
The long time scale for the ballot provides plenty of opportunity for a solution to be found to the dispute. But, given the price tag of the extra £40 million or more that has been put on the nurses' demands, it will not be found easily.
The Minister for Health, Mr Noonan, broke his self imposed silence on the dispute in the Dail yesterday, and on RTE, to tell the nurses that, no more money was available to meet their demands. He also warned the INO that the action it contemplated had "very serious ramifications for the prospects of any new pay agreement based on social partnership."
He said the nurses were in breach of the peace clause of the Programme for Competitiveness and Work by even balloting on strike action. He suggested that the union was confused about its objectives, with union leaders making pay demands that varied by 800 per cent.
This was a reference to a statement by the INO general secretary, Mr P.J. Madden, to £5 million as an amount that could go a long way to resolving outstanding issues (in an RTE interview on Monday), and a comment by the deputy general secretary, Mr Liam Doran, (on RTE yesterday) that the cost of meeting the INO demands could be around £40 million.
Last night Mr Doran said that Mr Madden was responding to a question about the cost of meeting the pay aspirations of newly qualified staff nurses, whilst he had been referring to the global package of demands.
The statement by Mr Madden angered many INO militants, who had sent a clear message to the union's council at a mass meeting of shop stewards on Monday that they wanted the pay deal completely renegotiated.
When the INO council set out in main objectives yesterday it was careful to try to embrace all of the shop stewards' demands, without leaving itself open to accusations that it was breaching the terms of reference of earlier negotiations.
Besides early retirement and a better staff nurse pay scale, the INO is opposing lower entry points for new staff nurses. Other issues include terms for 1,700 temporary staff nurses who are to be made permanent, and for midwives and paediatric nurses.