LRC to host Mater Private dispute talks

THE LABOUR Relations Commission has intervened in the dispute at the Mater Private hospital in Dublin where staff are scheduled to strike from next Monday.

Siptu and the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO)have served notice of strike action in protest at moves by management to introduce pay cuts of between 4 and 5 per cent.

The unions said yesterday that talks were to begin at the commission on the issue today.

INMO industrial relations officer Albert Murphy said: “We have accepted the invitation by the LRC on a without prejudice basis and without preconditions.

“As with all disputes, a negotiated resolution will be required and we will commit ourselves fully to the negotiations.”

Siptu health sector organiser Paul Bell said the union was going into the discussions “in good faith and without preconditions, and we hope that the company will engage in a similar way”. Management at the hospital confirmed the commission had intervened.

The hospital has maintained that in addition to the recession, it has also had to deal with cutbacks in the VHI’s budget and the National Treatment Purchase Fund’s budget as well as reductions in public health spending in the Republic and Northern Ireland.

Meanwhile, Siptu members at the Royal Hospital Donnybrook, in Dublin, are to begin an all-out strike today in protest at the outsourcing of jobs.

The union said the voluntary hospital, which is funded by the Department of Health and HSE, had outsourced the jobs of a laundry operator and a porter to a private contractor.

Separately, lower-paid civil servants in the CPSU put a ban on answering telephones in Government offices in the southeast yesterday.

The move is in protest at pay cuts in the budget.