Members of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO ) staged a lunchtime demonstration outside University Hospital Galway yesterday (Wednesday ) in protest over Government plans to introduce “savage” pay cuts for fourth year student nurses.
The action, the first in the INMO’s campaign to reverse the pay cuts - which will reduce the interns’ pay to 76 per cent of the minimum staff rate this year and eventually abolish all payments in 2015 - was attended by pre-registration nurses and midwives and students from all four years of the undergraduate programme. It was supported by qualified colleagues, including other unions representing nurses. The organisers stressed patient services were not affected.
Rallies will take place in the coming weeks and the INMO warns its action could escalate into strikes next month unless the Government reverses its proposal.
Fourth year student nurses are paid 80 per cent of the minimum staff nurse scale during this nine-month internship which forms part of their four-year degree programme. They are required to work a full roster including 12 hour days, night duty and weekend shift patterns.
However, the Department of Health announced before Christmas that it is to reduce their pay to 76 per cent of the minimum staff nurse rate this year. Their salary will be gradually cut over the next four years until it is just 40 per cent of the staff rate in 2014 before abolishing all payments in 2015.
Noreen Muldoon, the INMO’s industrial relations officer in the west, says the nurses will then be forced to work fulltime on wards, providing direct patient care, for no wage.
“The INMO will continue with its campaign of action until these cuts are reversed. This proposal devalues, to the level of slave labour, the nature of the essential direct care given during this 36-week rostered placement. No one can seriously expect people to work the full roster and range of duties while replacing qualified staff, for no pay.
“This was a flawed, ill thought out and unnecessary decision which is insulting to every nurse and midwife in this country. The constant reference to the protection of frontline staff and services is once again seen to be nothing more than empty rhetoric. In reality, this decision attacks the lowest paid workers in the health service and cannot, and will not, be tolerated or accepted.”
A failure to resolve the issue, in the wake of the lunchtime protests and forthcoming march in Dublin on February 16, will result in the INMO balloting all fourth year pre-registration nurses/midwives for a withdrawal of labour with industrial action commencing in early March.
“Meetings are being arranged with the leaders of the five political parties. At these meetings we will be asking them to confirm, if they were in government, that they will reverse this pay cut. The response from each political party will subsequently be made known to the 6,000 members involved in this campaign ahead of the general election.”
Meanwhile city councillor Catherine Connolly, who joined the nurses in their lunchtime protest, said she fully supported them.
“The phased reduction in pay from 76 per cent of the minimum point on the new lower scale this year to no payment at all for fourth year students in 2015 is disgraceful and really amounts to abuse of what is predominantly a female workforce.”
She said nurses, both fully qualified and students, are the backbone of the health service.
“Given the current embargo on recruitment - student nurses have become an integral and indispensable part of the hospital workforce. Indeed without student nurses the health system would come to a standstill.
“I had absolutely no hesitation in supporting their campaign to reverse the unfair and unjust government decision and to reinstate the pay of fourth year student nurses/midwives to 80 per cent of the minimum of the current staff nurse scale.”
Peter Mannion, the president of NUI Galway Students’ Union, said the proposal is a “despicable act by a dying Government” which will have huge implications for an already overburdened health system.
“The Department of Health and Children is effectively introducing slave labour by cutting and removing pay for student nurses on work placement. We’re not talking about occasional hours outside the classroom here - student nurses work a full week including nights and weekends and perform many of the same functions as qualified nurses. To expect anybody to do that for nothing is beyond belief.”
