The Nurses.

Dr Galen

PeakOutput wrote:

with all due respect in your own ignorance you have clearly not read the whole thread.

as has already been explained working to rule is not doing what it says in your contract its doing the least amount of work to cause the most amount of disruption without, apparently, affecting patients safety

can i just point out that what we are not doing is this:

answering or using phones (except in cases of patient priority)

using IT systems

thats it

sam34

nurse_baz wrote:

The doctors are aware of this, and so, accordingly are answering all pages bearing this in mind.

Secondly, the are 2 systems inplace, In my hospital anyway. each ward has an "emergnecis phone" and thats the one we've been bleeping off, if that phone rings....its answered, by anyone about, as we know its probably something serious. also there is a central call room, which can be used as a bit of go between in cases of doubt. each ward also has had an admin person in place during the day to anser all incoming calls, normally this has been the ward clerk or some such other person.

re the doctors answering pages- thats not in doubt and wasnt the point i was making. i menat that when the doctor attempts to answer a page by phoning the ward, that phonecall will prob go unanswered.
your hospital is to be commended for the emergency phone and central call room etc, but i doubt this is the case nationwide.

PeakOutput

nurse_baz wrote:

can i just point out that what we are not doing is this:

answering or using phones (except in cases of patient priority)

using IT systems

thats it

are either of those things in your contract or if not specifically stated are they a standardised way of doing something that is in your job description(like inputting medical i assume)

Dr Galen

sam34 wrote:

re the doctors answering pages- thats not in doubt and wasnt the point i was making. i menat that when the doctor attempts to answer a page by phoning the ward, that phonecall will prob go unanswered.
your hospital is to be commended for the emergency phone and central call room etc, but i doubt this is the case nationwide.

well as far as I'm aware, the emergency phone thing and all is HSE policy at present so i'd imagine all wards are like this. and as someone else pointed out, when you bleep someone, you stay by that phone anyway for a bit, giving them a chance to call back. thats normal in any situation really.

in the present scenario though, to clear it up, we'd page from the "emergency phone" and then thats the number the doc will call back to. so then anyone will answer.

on a side point, nurses aren't the only ones on a ward at any given time. and in the run of the mill docs/secretaries/physios all do and should answer the phone if it rings beside them anyways. at present, thats been happening a bit more

Dr Galen

PeakOutput wrote:

are either of those things in your contract or if not specifically stated are they a standardised way of doing something that is in your job description(like inputting medical i assume)

i'd have to look now to be honest, i do know that IT work isn't mentioned in either, in my case anyway as a General nurse. keeping accurate written records is though i know that.

i forgot to mention that we also are not attending meetings unless they relate to a specific patient. whoops

i was only making clear though that these are the tasks we are not doing. I more or less agree with your definition of work to rule though. I think we've just played with that term a bit really. the core of our work i.e. patient is care is still getting done without question.

K-9

nurse_baz wrote:

can i suggest that you look here and here for some of the reasoning behind the action thats currently going on. Hopefully will make the nurses point of view more clear and show the rationale behind it

Thanks. I see your point but Linking jobs to other jobs/grades is another element of the public service pay structure. Any new deals have knock on consequences on other grades/jobs. There's been chat for years of ending this but off course nothing done. It's not as much of an issue in the private sector as you can be guided by salary surveys and market rates.

TV3 news (I know!) had figures this evening of nurses starting on €31/32,000. I presume this takes account of the 39 hour week so maybe thats why it is higher than the figures that I have heard before of around €25,000.

€31/32,000 was more than their figures for Gardai and slightly less than a teachers starting wage. They stated the average wage for a nurse was over €50,000. Again, it's TV3 but I'm sure they are getting these figures from relaible sources.

"8,000 Nurses have left the country" But 40,000 nurses now work in Ireland, supposed to be a 33% increase on 10 years ago.

Nurze_baz wrote:

An extra admin staffer in the afternoon, again freeing us up to do nursey stuff......and everything actually seemed to run a bit more efficiently from a non-nursing point of view.

Gerry Robinson pointed out this in his series on the NHS. I think alot of it was a case of just because people have being doing things a certain way for years, doesn't mean the system can't be changed and run more efficiently. It does raise the issue of what all the administration staff [56% extra in last 10 years] are doing now and what do all those Health Board do now that there is only one HSE.

Extra Admin or Nursing staff is not the answer though. The Health Service already employs 110/120,000 people.

That extra money would be better spent on new A&E depts. etc. for extra value for money/productivity.

Dr Galen

Thanks. I see your point but Linking jobs to other jobs/grades is another element of the public service pay structure. Any new deals have knock on consequences on other grades/jobs. There's been chat for years of ending this but off course nothing done. It's not as much of an issue in the private sector as you can be guided by salary surveys and market rates.

our problem is that we've got no private sector equivalent to compare to. so what we do is compare to other health professionals, which are the closet match. typically these are the likes of other degree level professionals such as physios.chiropodists/play therapists etc. its really the only way we have to compare our wage levels on a sector level.

TV3 news (I know!) had figures this evening of nurses starting on €31/32,000. I presume this takes account of the 39 hour week so maybe thats why it is higher than the figures that I have heard before of around €25,000.

€31/32,000 was more than their figures for Gardai and slightly less than a teachers starting wage. They stated the average wage for a nurse was over €50,000. Again, it's TV3 but I'm sure they are getting these figures from relaible sources.

the offical starting salaries are found on the INO website, but a nurse fresh out of college starts on €30323. certainly not bad money when you look at average industrial wages etc, but when you think that nurses deal with life or death situations on a daily basis well then, it does shed a different light on it.

Gerry Robinson pointed out this in his series on the NHS. I think alot of it was a case of just because people have being doing things a certain way for years, doesn't mean the system can't be changed and run more efficiently. It does raise the issue of what all the administration staff [56% extra in last 10 years] are doing now and what do all those Health Board do now that there is only one HSE.

Extra Admin or Nursing staff is not the answer though. The Health Service already employs 110/120,000 people.

That extra money would be better spent on new A&E depts. etc. for extra value for money/productivity

in the mian i couldn't agree more, the HSE needs a full review. Did Prof Drumm himself not state only a few months ago that there would need to a review of what all thses people where doing, when reports surfaced that there wasn't enough work to keep them all busy. My only argument is that if we're going to open all these new fangled units like community A&E's etc, we'll actually need more front line staff to cope!

PeakOutput

nurse_baz wrote:

our problem is that we've got no private sector equivalent to compare to. so what we do is compare to other health professionals, which are the closet match. typically these are the likes of other degree level professionals such as physios.chiropodists/play therapists etc. its really the only way we have to compare our wage levels on a sector level.

is there any particular reason why nurses in private hospitals cant be used as a comparison???? im sure there is but i cant see one


edit im assuming they are privately employed

Wishbone Ash

PeakOutput wrote:

working to rule is not doing what it says in your contract its doing the least amount of work to cause the most amount of disruption without, apparently, affecting patients safety

nesf wrote:

Work to rule is more than that. It is a form of industrial action, and honestly, if you use common sense, you'd gather that in order for it to be effective as a form of industrial action that there would have to be some form of slow down or negative effect coming from it.

Otherwise, if it effected nothing and everything ran as normal, the party working to rule would just be ignored indefinitely.

The work to rule is intended to cause maximum disruption to senior hospital administrative management without compromising patient care.

Two examples of how this operates.

1. As nurses are refusing to deal with non emergency telephone calls, hospital administrators have been forced to act as "messengers" and manually deliver messages to wards.

2. Community services/clinics are often opened and closed by nurses. They are first to arrive in the morning and last to leave at night (as they work a longer week than all other health care professionals ). Nurses are refusing to secure/unsecure these premises (as they are not contracted to do so)forcing senior management to do so or employ security companies to do it.

PeakOutput wrote:

are either of those things in your contract or if not specifically stated are they a standardised way of doing something that is in your job description(like inputting medical i assume)

Nothing in nurses' contract about using IT. Many hospitals do not use any form of IT and there is no obligation on any nurse to be "computer literate".

Wishbone Ash

PeakOutput wrote:

is there any particular reason why nurses in private hospitals cant be used as a comparison???? im sure there is but i cant see one

edit im assuming they are privately employed

Yes, they are privately employed but private hospitals pay the "going rate" as set by the HSE-EA. (There may be some smaller differences which may be attributed to 'local bargaining').

constitutionus

PeakOutput wrote:

is there any particular reason why nurses in private hospitals cant be used as a comparison???? im sure there is but i cant see one


edit im assuming they are privately employed

because "private hospitals" dont actually do everything normal hospitals do which is why when they **** up they send their patients to the public hospitals for the treatment they cant offer. you'd effectively be benchmarking em againts nurses that dont do the same job.

constitutionus

nesf wrote:

Work to rule is more than that. It is a form of industrial action, and honestly, if you use common sense, you'd gather that in order for it to be effective as a form of industrial action that there would have to be some form of slow down or negative effect coming from it.

Otherwise, if it effected nothing and everything ran as normal, the party working to rule would just be ignored indefinitely.

with all due respect, thats bollocks. working to rule just means you do what your paid to do. nothing more nothing less. it is in fact what your job is. its what i do on a daily basis and my company doesnt grind to a halt

the reason its hitting the hospitals is exactly that the nurses are doing work theyre not meant to be doing! if we had an efficiently run health service the work to rule would have, like you posted, no effect. the fact it does and that operations are cancelled and the HSE are having such a hard time is actually an indicment of the HSE itself. theyre effectively saying they cant run a hospital without abusing nurses. despite the fact ,and heres the kicker, they actually pay people to do that work anyway. but guess what they go home. its easy to lay into the nurses but its the data entry clerks that arent doing the work and the administrators that arent liasing with labs and hospitals.

it may be percived to be industrial action but contractually and leagally it isnt. industrial action would be the removal of contractual duties and that hasnt happened yet.

K-9

nurse_baz wrote:

our problem is that we've got no private sector equivalent to compare to. so what we do is compare to other health professionals, which are the closet match. typically these are the likes of other degree level professionals such as physios.chiropodists/play therapists etc. its really the only way we have to compare our wage levels on a sector level.

the offical starting salaries are found on the INO website, but a nurse fresh out of college starts on €30323. certainly not bad money when you look at average industrial wages etc, but when you think that nurses deal with life or death situations on a daily basis well then, it does shed a different light on it.

There is a private sector nursing equivalent. I know they generally do not have to deal with A&E but I'm sure nurses could also learn from work practices in Private Hospitals. I remember a Consultant on the Radio last year saying it's amazing the difference in how public and private hospitals are run, and he was chatting about nurses/administrators as well as consultants.

Nurze_baz wrote:

but when you think that nurses deal with life or death situations on a daily basis well then, it does shed a different light on it.

IMO , it might actually, especially Pschy. Nursing, be more comparable to a Guard than a physio/therapist. Also if your dealing with life/death situations daily, how much is that worth more than a physio? But As you say yourself Nursing is a vocation.

Nurze_baz wrote:

in the mian i couldn't agree more, the HSE needs a full review. Did Prof Drumm himself not state only a few months ago that there would need to a review of what all thses people where doing, when reports surfaced that there wasn't enough work to keep them all busy. My only argument is that if we're going to open all these new fangled units like community A&E's etc, we'll actually need more front line staff to cope!

I really hope they deal with the Admins. even tougher as they have with the nurses. These new A&E's and refurbished ones have to be opened so deploy the underused admins! to them. Don't mind some extra staff, if there is going to be a tangible improvement in the Health Service ( and some extra taxes!) Would love if they tackled the waste of public money first, then allocate more money. The Gerry Robinson line:)

PeakOutput

constitutionus wrote:

with all due respect, thats bollocks. working to rule just means you do what your paid to do. nothing more nothing less. it is in fact what your job is. its what i do on a daily basis and my company doesnt grind to a halt

the reason its hitting the hospitals is exactly that the nurses are doing work theyre not meant to be doing! if we had an efficiently run health service the work to rule would have, like you posted, no effect. the fact it does and that operations are cancelled and the HSE are having such a hard time is actually an indicment of the HSE itself. theyre effectively saying they cant run a hospital without abusing nurses. despite the fact ,and heres the kicker, they actually pay people to do that work anyway. but guess what they go home. its easy to lay into the nurses but its the data entry clerks that arent doing the work and the administrators that arent liasing with labs and hospitals.

it may be percived to be industrial action but contractually and leagally it isnt. industrial action would be the removal of contractual duties and that hasnt happened yet.

paragraph one = you are wrong..........a nurse has already admitted as much

paragraph three = it is industrial action.....no ifs ands or buts


from wikipedia

Work-to-rule is an industrial action in which employees do no more than the minimum required by the rules of a workplace, and follow safety or other regulations to the letter in order to cause a slowdown rather than to serve their purpose. This is considered less disruptive than a strike or lockout; and just obeying the rules is less susceptible to disciplinary action. Notable examples have included nurses refusing to answer telephones and high school teachers refusing to write recommendation letters for their students' college applications.

Sometimes the term "rule-book slowdown" is used in a slightly different sense than "work-to-rule": the former involves applying to the letter rules that are normally set aside or interpreted less literally to increase efficiency; the latter, refraining from activities which are customary but not required by rule or job description. But the terms may be used synonymously.

Sometimes work-to-rule can be considered malicious compliance by employers as they pursue legal action.

K-9

Wishbone Ash wrote:

The work to rule is intended to cause maximum disruption to senior hospital administrative management without compromising patient care.

Two examples of how this operates.

1. As nurses are refusing to deal with non emergency telephone calls, hospital administrators have been forced to act as "messengers" and manually deliver messages to wards.

2. Community services/clinics are often opened and closed by nurses. They are first to arrive in the morning and last to leave at night (as they work a longer week than all other health care professionals ). Nurses are refusing to secure/unsecure these premises (as they are not contracted to do so)forcing senior management to do so or employ security companies to do it.

Bring in Michael O'Leary and Gerry Robinson and try and knock some heads together;). Only meants slightly tounge in cheek.

1. So administrators are also suffering from the strike and are less efficent because they have to manually deliver letters.
2. Nurses probably lock/unlock clinics etc. because they are there all the time. Extra security companies means extra money again.

Wishbone Ash wrote:

Nothing in nurses' contract about using IT. Many hospitals do not use any form of IT and there is no obligation on any nurse to be "computer literate".

What? In this day and age? :mad:

Surely it would be a stretch of the imagination to expect a nurse just out of college with a degree to have some form of an obligation to be computer literate. I mean, how do they do their assignments.

constitutionus

PeakOutput wrote:

paragraph one = you are wrong..........a nurse has already admitted as much

paragraph three = it is industrial action.....no ifs ands or buts


from wikipedia

yeah and wikipedia is so reliable. i dont care what a nurse said, thats their preception not legal fact. leagally your only obliged to do what your contracted to do therefore work to rule isnt industrial action. if it was you could be accused of taking industrial action by not getting your boss a coffee if he asked for one. work to rule is the main way most people in this economy work. the fact the nurses have been so abused that its a funtional tactic they can use againts the HSE is irrelevant. the majority of workers in the country do what they negotiated in their contracts and work to those rules. that why we negotiate them in the first place!

PeakOutput

constitutionus wrote:

yeah and wikipedia is so reliable. i dont care what a nurse said, again thats their preception. leagally your only obliged to do what your contracted to do therefore work to rule isnt industrial action. if it was you could be accused of taking industrial action by not getting your boss a coffee if he asked for one. work to rule is the main way most people in this economy work. the fact the nurses have been so abused that its a funtional tactic they can use againts the HSE is irrelevant. the majority of workers in the country do what they negotiated in their contracts and work to those rules. that why we negotiate them in the first place!

you need to do a little research on the subject i think. regardless of what the nurses are doing working to rule is industrial action which does not mean only doing what is in your contract. im not going to argue about definitions any longer.

it does not matter if it says in theircontract they need to be computer literate or not if the standardised way of doing a part of their job(updating medical records for example) is to use a computer programme then they are obliged to do it and not doing so is a breach of their contract.

health system is in a mess and needs to be sorted before the nurses full demands are met. i dont care if its extra admins(that would be a real bad idea) or extra nurses that are hired to do the work that will be left over if they get a 35hour week but until those extra staff are in place they should not get the shorter week. no1 has given a legitimate business/service orientated and objective reason why they should be given it

nesf

constitutionus wrote:

with all due respect, thats bollocks. working to rule just means you do what your paid to do. nothing more nothing less. it is in fact what your job is. its what i do on a daily basis and my company doesnt grind to a halt

the reason its hitting the hospitals is exactly that the nurses are doing work theyre not meant to be doing! if we had an efficiently run health service the work to rule would have, like you posted, no effect. the fact it does and that operations are cancelled and the HSE are having such a hard time is actually an indicment of the HSE itself. theyre effectively saying they cant run a hospital without abusing nurses. despite the fact ,and heres the kicker, they actually pay people to do that work anyway. but guess what they go home. its easy to lay into the nurses but its the data entry clerks that arent doing the work and the administrators that arent liasing with labs and hospitals.

it may be percived to be industrial action but contractually and leagally it isnt. industrial action would be the removal of contractual duties and that hasnt happened yet.

You don't understand the term very well. Work to rule entails, by definition, doing the absolute minimum that you can legally get away with without breaching health and safety. If you believe this is what you do in your normal job or that I might do this then you are misguided or you are an extremely poor worker. The vast majority of us in the workforce do more than the minimum role as specified in our contract. It's part of working, things fall between cracks and need fixing and occasionally we cover for other people etc.

In small companies it's even crazier, where your contracted role and your actual job could be very different things due to the "this needs to be done" factor.

nesf

Wishbone Ash wrote:

The work to rule is intended to cause maximum disruption to senior hospital administrative management without compromising patient care.

Two examples of how this operates.

1. As nurses are refusing to deal with non emergency telephone calls, hospital administrators have been forced to act as "messengers" and manually deliver messages to wards.

2. Community services/clinics are often opened and closed by nurses. They are first to arrive in the morning and last to leave at night (as they work a longer week than all other health care professionals ). Nurses are refusing to secure/unsecure these premises (as they are not contracted to do so)forcing senior management to do so or employ security companies to do it.

Would you agree that it is impossible to disrupt matters for senior admins without, in some way, creating hassle for patients? I mean, some of it will trickle down into the wards and waiting rooms will it not? I'm not thinking of sensational incidents but more mundane forms of hassle.

Heinrich

A few thoughts on the Nurses conflict:

• Where is the Minister, Drumm, Taoiseach at the moment?
• Would the IT literate nurses be spending their useful time on chat forums?
• Why all the nitpicking?
• Why do they work 39 hours whilst others work 39?
• How did the 39ers "negotiate" their deal?
• Why can Drumm be awarded colossal increases?
• Is it possible to re-run the poll after 14 pages of arguments to see if the arguments made any impact?
  

Just a few thoughts...

ucd_guy

Today I finished work in a northside hospital and I'd like to say that this bull**** about "not compromising patient care" is just that. Bull****.

Example: There's supposed to be a dedicated phone for urgent patient related business in every ward that you can ring and is guaranteed to be picked up. I was ringing four of them all morning and they were ringing out. There was an urgent clinical situation regarding one of our patients and I was ringing the dedicated phone in ICU for ten minutes before I eventually ended up having to sprint up four flights of stairs to grab a nurse. When I complained they weren't answering this "special" phone, the nurse shrugged and responded that they wouldn't be answering it, and encouraged me to complain to management.
Exact same thing happened later in the night - patient needed a scan but couldn't call the ward to inform them that there was a place on the CT table (which was being held for him, with about ten or fifteen other patients waiting for their scans), and ended up leaving the other hospital and walking the length of the hospital to ask them to send him down. Working to rule my hole. It's ridiculous.

Laslo

nurse_baz wrote:

...but when you think that nurses deal with life or death situations on a daily basis well then, it does shed a different light on it.

Haha. No. No it doesn't. You really are unbelievable! You've sat on this thread for 14 pages and pretty much contested every single assertion that didn't work in your favour and you've been blowing smoke up the arse of everyone that agrees with you. Absolutely pathetic.

You knew damn well what the pay was like when you accepted the job and you knew damn well what was involved in the job. If you didn't, you're stupid.

The average salary for nurses is between 50k and 55k - well above the national average. You earn more than enough already.

As for working less hours? Suck it up. I'm a software developer with 8 years experience, I work probably 50 hours a week, don't get paid any overtime and I earn 10k-15k less than the average nurse. Stop your bloody moaning and get back to work.

Madge

You tell her Laslo!!!

Heinrich

Laslo wrote:

You knew damn well what the pay was like when you accepted the job and you knew damn well what was involved in the job. If you didn't, you're stupid.

The average salary for nurses is between 50k and 55k - well above the national average. You earn more than enough already.

As for working less hours? Suck it up. I'm a software developer with 8 years experience, I work probably 50 hours a week, don't get paid any overtime and I earn 10k-15k less than the average nurse. Stop your bloody moaning and get back to work.

Calculating your salary based on the above you must be earning 40k PA. That's not a bad wage at all for farting out software. I hope your efforts are a little better that those who mad a balls of PPars and the joke stuff that the gardai are using!

The lady has been explaning how the average nursing salary is calculated but you do not seem to grasp it. Cause for concern.

Dr Galen

The lady has been explaning how the average nursing salary is calculated but you do not seem to grasp it. Cause for concern.

I am no more bothered about the vitriol that some jumped up software engineer has to spout. As far as I was aware, debate consisted of people with opposing views sticking to their views and talking about the issues, which in the main, is what most people have been doing. If said software enginerr had been able to pull himself/herself away from what ever important task they were up to ( reaching level 87 million on World of Warcraft.......designing a new schoolgirl avatar for some pseudo-online life simulator), and read this thread fully along with the other ones on the topic is Science and Politics, they would see that I have encouraged people many times to look both at the unions and the HSE website and read both sides of the issue. Also when posters have made statements that I donlt agree with I make no apology for disagreeing with them. If the poster doesn't like how this operates.......well maybe an online discussion forum ain't the place for you....

Now AS for those people assuming I'm a LADY.......:mad: how very stereotypical of you all

K-9

nurse_baz wrote:

I am no more bothered about the vitriol that some jumped up software engineer has to spout. If said software enginerr had been able to pull himself/herself away from what ever important task they were up to ( reaching level 87 million on World of Warcraft.......designing a new schoolgirl avatar for some pseudo-online life simulator), and read this thread fully along with the other ones on the topic is Science and Politics, they would see that I have encouraged people many times to look both at the unions and the HSE website and read both sides of the issue.

Now AS for those people assuming I'm a LADY.......:mad: how very steroptypical of you all

You're stereotyping now Nurze_baz.

Next we'll be saying that Guards/Nurses/Teachers are stuck up their own a***.:)

Not all of them definitely, but there is some that are very hard to listen to.

Dr Galen

You really are unbelievable! You've sat on this thread for 14 pages and pretty much contested every single assertion that didn't work in your favour

and here I go again, so either deal with it, or go away

You knew damn well what the pay was like when you accepted the job and you knew damn well what was involved in the job. If you didn't, you're stupid.

Last I checked we lived in a Democracy, since when was it a bad/wrong thing to look to better your conditions? You were around 8 years ago??? When the IT sector was filled with money.....and IT contractors charged the equivalent of Somalia's national debt to do a bit of programming......wasn't so wrong then was it? for someone that has obviously gotten some life experience......this is also a terribly lazy argument. How would feel the next time you go to hospital, there are no nurses to look after you? Because we al upped and left....

The average salary for nurses is between 50k and 55k - well above the national average. You earn more than enough already.

my salary and that of most nurses working within the health care system is much much less than this. Approx 20k less in a lot of cases. Are you aware how theses figure were arrived at? I thought you read the last 14 pages? what about the other threads?

As for working less hours? Suck it up. I'm a software developer with 8 years experience, I work probably 50 hours a week, don't get paid any overtime

maybe its time you had a chat with your boss.......oh no wait you can't, becasuse somewhere in the last few years Ireland has lost all sense of social justice and decency in the workplace (NB Generalisation I know but I'm on a rant). so if you bring it up, you'll say in return you'll be shown the door......meanwhile your ultimate boss probably drives around in a flashy car and has a mansion.

and I earn 10k-15k less than the average nurse

So, you'll believe figures from one sie and not the other? Seems like you've already made up your mind

. Stop your bloody moaning and get back to work

but we haven't stopped working. what u sugest here is that we've laid down tools and are doing nothing. we're still in work looking after the patients, just not performing certain tasks. i'd suggest you have a look at the facts before you make this kind of inflammatory statement

K-9

nurse_baz wrote:

Last I checked we lived in a Democracy, since when was it a bad/wrong thing to look to better your conditions? How would feel the next time you go to hospital, there are no nurses to look after you? Because we al upped and left....

If more Irish nurses leave more non-nationals will be employed. They are willing to come over here and work.
Thats an economic reality for both the public and private sector.

nurse_baz wrote:

maybe its time you had a chat with your boss.......oh no wait you can't, becasuse somewhere in the last few years Ireland has lost all sense of social justice and decency in the workplace (NB Generalisation I know but I'm on a rant). so if you bring it up, you'll say in return you'll be shown the door......

I'm sure he gets wage increases like everybody else. Ireland has not lost social justice and decency. One of the highest minimum wages in Europe, no tax or PRSI on that wage, FIS payments increased etc. etc.

nurse_baz wrote:

meanwhile your ultimate boss probably drives around in a flashy car and has a mansion.

Or maybe not. Plenty lost fortunes after the dot com crash. The fancy car/house are the reward for risk taken in self employment. Can work both ways though.

I see on the news, the INO are threatening the Govt. that the Nurses will vote en bloc against the Govt. in the election. I think the Govt. knows they aren't going to get a lot of votes there anyway.

I think this sounds like the INO is panicking a little.

Supercell

Am amazed at the lack of support for the nurses here, just what is wrong with our society?

Nurses are highly trained individuals that work all hours to save peoples lives.
Just how the hell is that not something to be rewarded in a crappy salary of 30K?? (I heard on the radio today)

Without them our hospitals and heathcare system would collapse. They do work they many of us wouldnt dream of doing - change some old guys piss bag, wipe another wrinkly arse after a ****e, gave comfort to some who's loved one just died, held a scared persons hand before they entered the operating theatre.

It's not the glamour side of medical care, but jesus these people are essential to our health care system and should be given a decent wage for the essential work they do.

We ALL grow old, have relatives or loved ones that need medical care at some point, and guess who will be caring for them during their stay in the hospital? - yep the nurses.

Bravo nurses, I salute you, you deserve a better wage for the amazing work you do.

PeakOutput

Seanies32 wrote:

I see on the news, the INO are threatening the Govt. that the Nurses will vote en bloc against the Govt. in the election. I think the Govt. knows they aren't going to get a lot of votes there anyway.

I think this sounds like the INO is panicking a little.

all ill say is that changing the government is the best that cn come out of it if the lose 40K votes but it still wont get the nurses what they want.........the next government wont give them it either...COZ IT MAKES NO ECONOMIC SENSE