Rights of Part Time Nurses in the HSE

A friend of mine is a part time nurse in the HSE western region. She has been working part time for about 4 years for the same hospital on contracts of 6 months at a time.

I had a look at one of the contracts (they are all the same) and they are very scant about working hours of the type of call they have on her.

Over last 4 years she has worked around 3 days each week, summing up to in the region of 18 hours on average. She has always been in outpatients clinic and doing mornings or occaisionally full days but no weekends or anti-social hours.

The problem is that they now want her to go out of the clinic and on to the wards. Weekends and anti-social hours are in and they seem to want to bind her to a contract of around 18 hours per week. She has 4 young kids and is trying to get them to be sensible but they are not listening. She wants a contract of around 10 hours and not to have to do weekends or evenings as she has kids to get to school etc.

What she needs to know is what rights she has in terms of the days and hours she works. In particular, what notice do they have to give her of her schedule and whether she has any rights concerning working hours.

I have scanned the part time workers legislation of 2001, and a synopsis of it, and it seems pretty vague on this to be honest.

If anybody out there has same circumstances or is a part time HSE nurse also with kids and facing, or has faced, this issue it would be great help to hear from them. It has caused my friend a lot of upset and she would like to know if she can do anything to help.