NURSES have made it clear that issues such as early retirement, long pay scales and adequate reward for positions of responsibility must be addressed in any new restructuring deal, if a national strike in July is to be averted.
At yesterday's session of the Irish Nurses' Organisation's conference it was made quite clear that they will not be deterred from industrial action by any Government threat that they are in breach of the Programme for Competitiveness and Work.
As Ms Edwina O'Keeffe of the INO's executive council put it "ask the public out there if this Government has lived up to its commitments under the PCW in areas like tax reform. I say they haven't", she said. "We are prepared to stand up and fight this Government.
The deputy general secretary of the INO, Mr Liam Doran, opened the debate with a report on the pay talks and explained they had to be conducted within the terms of the PCW. As such, it was the best deal negotiated so far by any group of workers.
But that was not enough for the delegates, who criticised their negotiators and the Government for the terms on offer.
There was also criticism of the suggestion that the deal was too complex for nurses to understand. Ms O'Keeffe said the Minister for Health, Mr Noonan, had "suggested we did not understand the discussions and we got it wrong. I would suggest to the Minister that he didn't understand and that he got it wrong".
Only two aspects of the rejected deal were given even the most qualified of welcomes. These were the proposal to make 1,200 temporary nurses permanent and the proposal on electronic payment of wages, or "pay path".
But even "pay path" should not be conceded until a better deal was on the table, said delegates. And the general secretary of the INO, Mr P. J. Madden, said, in winding up the debate, that no one should agree to even minor changes in working conditions and practices until the restructuring deal was concluded.
He also warned that the strike beginning on July 1st would not be selective or escalated gradually.
Every acute hospital, non acute hospital and community hospital in the Republic would be affected and the action would be for as long as it took to win a new deal.
Even staff nurses delegates with long service, who would gain from the present offer, denounced it vehemently because it sought to introduce "yellow pack" rates for new entrants to the profession and did not give adequate rewards to other nursing grades such as managers and public health nurses.
But the issue that most provoked nurses' anger was early retirement. One delegate said that 50 per cent of staff in her hospital were over 40.
"When I was a young nurse people left because of marriage and natural wastage. If there were one or two older nurses on the award we could carry them, and we did carry them.
"When I reach 60 there will be three or four of us on together," she said. "We will be older than the patients. We'll be fighting them for use of the walking aids."
A Sligo delegate described how one of her members, aged 64, was having to look after patients in a geriatric ward. Another Sligo delegate said nurses should be able to retire after 30 years, like prison officers, gardai and defence force personnel.
Ms Mary Doody said 72 per cent of public health nurses were on the maximum of their scale at £20,450. If she had joined her health board as a secretary, she would now be earning £25,000 a year.
Ms Mona Clancy, from Cork, said early retirement was essential, but she also highlighted the low wages of home helps. She said it took up to a day of her time each week organising them and "it would break your heart to ask any woman to work for £1.50p per hour".
