PAY TALKS with public sector trade unions are due to resume today, amid uncertainty about the planned 48-hour hospital strike in April.
A senior Siptu health official has said the strike will go ahead, despite the pay talks.
He described the industrial dispute with the Dublin Academic Teaching Hospitals as “a parallel dispute”. The Siptu action is based not only on pay but also on the possible outsourcing of jobs.
However, Ictu president Jack O’Connor said yesterday there would be no escalation of industrial action while talks were continuing.
Some 4,500 lower-paid staff in the seven hospitals – including porters, catering personnel, security, healthcare assistants and supervisors – are to go on strike from 1am on Wednesday, April 7th, until 1am on Friday, April 9th.
The public hospitals to be affected are St James’s, St Vincent’s, Connolly Memorial, Mater, Beaumont, Tallaght and St Colmcille’s in Loughlinstown.
Siptu health sector organiser Paul Bell said the dispute would be proceeding. He said hospital management had sought to cancel a meeting planned for this week to discuss the proposed dispute and the union felt the organisation was not taking the strike threat seriously. There would be a “sharp, short withdrawal of labour” in Beaumont hospital as early as the week after next if the organisation did not take it seriously, he said.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio One's This Weekprogramme, Mr O'Connor said an opportunity was being afforded in the talks process to see if an agreement could be forged. There would not be an escalation of the dispute process, he said.
Referring to the planned hospital strike, he said there was a period between now and the strike date that “affords an opportunity to see if a meeting of minds can be arrived at”.
That was the reason why such a long period of notice was served, he added.
Unions were preparing to step up their six-week dispute over pay cuts introduced in last December’s budget when the new talks began last Friday. The increased campaign was to have included a series of work stoppages that would have hit schools, hospitals and public services. The talks are being facilitated by senior officials of the Labour Relations Commission.
Mr O’Connor agreed that the Government’s agenda to cut expenditure had not changed since the last talks collapsed in December, but said what was different was that negotiations were not taking place “in the kind of pressure cooker that exists a week before a budget”, and the talks were being facilitated.
“Independent mediators will be able to record the position of the parties in the event of a breakdown and it won’t be possible to camouflage a breakdown for reasons other than that which is at issue between the parties,” he said.
Ibec director Brendan McGinty said it would be a significant measure of good faith if unions ceased their current action.