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8 Hour job on a Sunday to reset a fire alarm in St. James Hospital...

  • 10-08-2010 10:00PM
    #1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 585 ✭✭✭


    http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0810/electricians.html

    So, a fire alarm goes off in St. James's Hospital. It's out of hours on a Sunday. An on-call electrician has to come in to reset the fire alarm. The minimum time that is the hospital allow for this task on a normal day is 4 hours. On a Sunday that task becomes a job that is catagorised and paid as an 8 hour job.

    So the hospital management decided to try to cut costs and give what probably is a 10 minute job maximum, to the in-house security company that has a 24/7 presence in the hospital.

    If ever I needed convincing that health and safety concerns are the last refuge of the lazy inept scoundrel, then this action on the part of the TEEU would appear to be it. They are claiming now that the health and safety of patients is being put at risk. I'd argue that the health and safety of patients is very obviously at risk when money that can be used to pay for nurses, care staff and fixed assets like medical equipment and beds, is being paid to electricians who refuse to allow nurses to change lightbulbs, and refuse to allow what is obviously a false fire alarm situation, be reset by a designated security person.

    Yet again I make the point that no private sector business could hope to survive this type of gimp like protectionist seige mentality and hopelessly senseless dose of industrial fridigity. We wonder why we are spending the bones of 60 billion Euro a year as a state while taking in approximately half that amount in annual tax revenue. 4 hours pay, 8 hours pay on a Sunday for flicking a switch or pressing a button and an electrician being the only person who is considered suitably qualified to change a light blub.

    Senators and TD's saying that the matter of their expenses is just too complex to be managed within simple rules, but there is no problem whatsoever setting down simple rules for the rest of us mugs when it comes to subsidence payments and the claiming of workplace expenses.

    The more I live in this place the more it becomes clear to me that the place is infested with greedy gombeens who have no sense of national duty.


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Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 88,968 ✭✭✭✭mike65


    Heard that, a variation of the classic Morethanmyjobsworse theme.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,836 ✭✭✭donkey balls


    i used to have to go into work on a bank holiday sunday and open up the office/whse for an hour yet got paid a min of 4 hours,what do you think i should have got paid.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,582 ✭✭✭WalterMitty


    Just remember people these "public servants" want to screw as much as possible out of the rest of the country. Its Irish people who pay their wages not some evil foreigner or corporation, although its getting more and more likely that they will face savage cuts if the deficits cant be trimmed and we default on our bonds or the markets turn against us.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,582 ✭✭✭WalterMitty


    i used to have to go into work on a bank holiday sunday and open up the office/whse for an hour yet got paid a min of 4 hours,what do you think i should have got paid.
    This is a hospital which is open 24/7 365, they should be rostered to do sunday work as part of normal working week. Unions wont let workers work outside rigid times thats why multi million pound machines sit idle most of day as workers in hospitals wont work outside 9-5 type hours. In private sector they work the machines as much as possble to reduce cost, and staff dont get premiums to work evenings or saturdays, i got an mri at 9pm one friday evening when all the public sector mri people were off in pub since 5pm.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 585 ✭✭✭MrDarcy


    You'd have to ask why the hospital don't have a shift set up to provide for an electrician to be on site 24/7. Surely there could be a list of preventative maintenance work planned on the day shift for the night shift to take care of. I've a friend to is a nurse in St. James and she said that once they wanted to move a toaster from one end of a mini kitchen in a ward, onto another socket in the same room. This involved plugging out a 3 pin toaster plug from one socket in a room and plugging it into another socket on another wall in the same room after moving a table across a room. In order for this to be done, the ward sister had to be consulted, then she had to go off and call the electricians up to move the toaster. You can only speculate what kind of pre-historic work practices are going on in St. James that require a qualified electrician to be called to plug out and toaster and plug it back in again.

    The same union representatives that are claiming that the health and safety of pateients is at risk here, when their partners are at home and want to move a toaster or change a light bulb or reset a fire alarm, and their electrician husbands are at work, do they call out an electrician to the house, in order to tick the "health and safety" box, because after all, "health and safety is our prime concern"???


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 425 ✭✭daithicarr


    how can they possibly modernise the work practices? if they try the unions would bring everything to a stop.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 9,362 ✭✭✭Sergeant


    I'm not being sensationalist, but these electricians should be fired. Make an example of them. Let the parasitic unions "ballot" for industrial action. Let them scream bloody murder. Face them down, put the story in the papers, on the TV. It's a simple case of greed, and that is a very unpalatable attribute in the current climate.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 425 ✭✭daithicarr


    its not just the electricians fault the whoe system is flawed, work practices need to be improved across the board


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,062 ✭✭✭Fighting Irish


    Just remember people these "public servants" want to screw as much as possible out of the rest of the country. Its Irish people who pay their wages not some evil foreigner or corporation, although its getting more and more likely that they will face savage cuts if the deficits cant be trimmed and we default on our bonds or the markets turn against us.

    90% of people want to get as much money as they can, it's not "public servants" lol, back in the good aul times most people charged as much as they could


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 14 FargoBoyle86


    Ha the toaster thing is daft!!!!However on a serious note, I have worked in Hospital maintenance before. With regard to the Fire Alarm, I think it is only right for the Electrician to be called. He has to check why it went off and a report has to be logged. It is simply Health and Safety proceedures. It is to cover the HSE's ass. As for a lightbulb and the most trivial of jobs, an electrician must do it because he is qualified to do it. Any elecrical jobs done by other personell, the HSE are still liable if anything goes wrong.As for the 8 hours, this is cheaper. Having somene on 24/7 is by far more expensive. The electrician who was supposed to be called in on the Sunday morning, could not go out the night before and at any hour of the night could have got called in. With regard to being paid double time, he is entitled to it. In terms of the 4 hours he was granted for a 20 minute job, if anything happens within those 4 hours it is included in the above.


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  • Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 28,858 Mod ✭✭✭✭oscarBravo


    With regard to the Fire Alarm, I think it is only right for the Electrician to be called. He has to check why it went off and a report has to be logged.
    Why is an electrician the only person qualified to operate a fire alarm panel? Non-electricians operate them safely outside of the HSE.
    As for a lightbulb and the most trivial of jobs, an electrician must do it because he is qualified to do it.
    You need a qualification to change a lightbulb?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 9,362 ✭✭✭Sergeant


    HHowever on a serious note, I have worked in Hospital maintenance before. With regard to the Fire Alarm, I think it is only right for the Electrician to be called. He has to check why it went off and a report has to be logged. It is simply Health and Safety proceedures. It is to cover the HSE's ass.


    And this is why the HSE is a massive, bloated mess. No profit orientated organisation would require a report to be logged about a fire alarm going off. Who does the electrician have to give the report to? What does the recipient do with it?

    Why can't a security guard go to the alarm, look for signs of fire, smoke, or vandalism, and disengage if none are present? Is there an electrician always onsite, or does he have to be called from home to investigate the alarm?

    This is simply bureaucracy for the sake of it.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 916 ✭✭✭whatnext


    Ha the toaster thing is daft!!!!However on a serious note, I have worked in Hospital maintenance before. With regard to the Fire Alarm, I think it is only right for the Electrician to be called. He has to check why it went off and a report has to be logged. It is simply Health and Safety proceedures. It is to cover the HSE's ass. As for a lightbulb and the most trivial of jobs, an electrician must do it because he is qualified to do it. Any elecrical jobs done by other personell, the HSE are still liable if anything goes wrong.As for the 8 hours, this is cheaper. Having somene on 24/7 is by far more expensive. The electrician who was supposed to be called in on the Sunday morning, could not go out the night before and at any hour of the night could have got called in. With regard to being paid double time, he is entitled to it. In terms of the 4 hours he was granted for a 20 minute job, if anything happens within those 4 hours it is included in the above.

    Excuse me, but I dont believe this is true. They log that they reset the alarm and under who's instruction it is done. Having just asked an FM in that sector, and I admit they don't work in the hospital in question, but the electrician is not responsible for diagnostics


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 585 ✭✭✭MrDarcy


    Ha the toaster thing is daft!!!!However on a serious note, I have worked in Hospital maintenance before. With regard to the Fire Alarm, I think it is only right for the Electrician to be called. He has to check why it went off and a report has to be logged. It is simply Health and Safety proceedures. It is to cover the HSE's ass. As for a lightbulb and the most trivial of jobs, an electrician must do it because he is qualified to do it. Any elecrical jobs done by other personell, the HSE are still liable if anything goes wrong.As for the 8 hours, this is cheaper. Having somene on 24/7 is by far more expensive. The electrician who was supposed to be called in on the Sunday morning, could not go out the night before and at any hour of the night could have got called in. With regard to being paid double time, he is entitled to it. In terms of the 4 hours he was granted for a 20 minute job, if anything happens within those 4 hours it is included in the above.

    So you're telling us that when a light bulb has to be replaced in your bedroom, you call an electrician because to your mind an electrician is the only person who is qualified to do it???


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 585 ✭✭✭MrDarcy


    90% of people want to get as much money as they can, it's not "public servants" lol, back in the good aul times most people charged as much as they could

    While we all want to get paid as much as we can and have a decent quality of life, I think in the private sector, generally there is a certain degree of cop on and logic going on when it comes to maintaining efficiencies within the workplace that are REQUIRED, in order to keep the business cost competitive. No private sector business could afford to call in an electrician for a minimum of 4 hours a go, every time a fire alarm happened to go off when there was no fire. Or calling an electrician to change a light bulb, you wouldn't last a month in business with this approach to cost management, you'd be gone...


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 290 ✭✭kuntboy


    With regard to being paid double time, he is entitled to it.

    This line makes me feel sick.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,044 ✭✭✭✭murphaph


    i used to have to go into work on a bank holiday sunday and open up the office/whse for an hour yet got paid a min of 4 hours,what do you think i should have got paid.
    That's not the point being made: Resetting a fire alarm is something any gimp can do. Used to work for IBM: Large facility like a hospital...security (who were there anyway) were responsible for resetting fire alarms etc.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 33,709 ✭✭✭✭Cantona's Collars


    The entire system is flawed and needs a blank canvas approach-there's too many loopholes to take advantage of and demarcation rules.There's a whole "it's not my job attitude" even down to menial tasks,calling in a Spark to reset an alarm is one thing but getting paid for 8 hours to do a ten minute task is crazy,but that's the HSE in a nutshell.
    They have to cover their asses with health and safety statements and regulations,I'm no electrician but even I can reset an alarm in minutes but because I'm not 'qualified' I couldn't touch it.With regard to crazy H+S rules in this country I could use a consaw which had the potential to kill or seriously injure you but couldn't change the blade in it without doing a 300 euro course-as I said crazy.Maybe I should have got someone qualified and paid them for 8 hours to do a 10 minute job changing it for me-don't think so!!


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,227 ✭✭✭✭jmayo


    This story and the attitudes of and excuses preferred by some posters, who I bet work in public sector, just goes to highlight how the government must take on the unions and DESTROY them once and for all.

    The task of unions when first setup was to protect workers rights from greedy uncaring leeching employers.
    There is now more than enough labour laws and industrial relations bodies to help protect workers.
    Now in affect the unions are screwing honest decent hard workers by protecting the lazy and the incompetent.
    They are often contributing to making the jobs of ordinary workers more difficult by maintaining stupid inefficient backward work practices that protect the lazy, greedy inefficient members.

    When faced with real issues like workplace bullying they do shag all since the bully is as well protected as the bullied.

    Let the unions go on strike and see how much public sympathy they get.
    Let them use up their resources.
    There will be pain for the services using general public short term, but long term it will help allow the public sector be revolutionised for the good of all, including the honest hardworkers that work there.

    I am not allowed discuss …



  • Closed Accounts Posts: 14 FargoBoyle86


    Whatnext, I apologise could have been wrong with the report. Was working along side fitters, not electricians. MrDarcy, of course I would change a lightbulb myself. However lets just say there was something wrong with the light, and a nurse or porter attempted to change the lightbulb, and got electricuted? I'll say again, its to cover the HSE's ass.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,940 ✭✭✭ballsymchugh


    Whatnext, I apologise could have been wrong with the report. Was working along side fitters, not electricians. MrDarcy, of course I would change a lightbulb myself. However lets just say there was something wrong with the light, and a nurse or porter attempted to change the lightbulb, and got electricuted? I'll say again, its to cover the HSE's ass.

    what if the electrician got electrocuted? does that save the HSE's ass? just interested to know what would be the outcome if the same thing happened to different occupations for what was considered a simple job.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,629 ✭✭✭ART6


    In a long engineering career in the UK and Ireland, I have watched the health & safety business steadily becoming more nonsensical year on year, and a lot of it is down to the legal profession. Years ago, if you hit your thumb with a hammer you swore, sucked it for a minute, and then got on with the job. Nowadays there will be an injuries claims solicitor cruising like a shark around your employer, and he will happily sue on your behalf for the emotional and physical trauma. That is why any employer, not just the HSE, ends up in the crazy position of having to train someone to climb a step ladder, and only allowing "qualified" people to do so.

    It's why even the simplest job has to be accompanied with a written method statement and risk analysis, and if those are not undertaken and the employee injures himself, even as a result of his own stupidity, then the employer will be liable for damages and possibly even prosecution. It's why, on a construction site, I have to "induct" every worker by instructing him on how to work on such a site, when invariably all of the workforce have been doing that most of their working lives and know how to every bit as well as I do.

    It's why as a qualified engineer, if I want to change the disk on an angle grinder, I have to first be taught how to by a teacher in bloody college who is less qualified than I am and has probably never used such a tool in earnest in his whole life.

    Meanwhile, of course, we are going to compete in the world stage with the industries of India, China, etc etc. We are going to do so by stifling industry and the public sector with every stupid regulation we can dream up. We are not going to expect the individual to accept some responsibility for his own actions.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,116 ✭✭✭starviewadams


    The electrician would more then likely know if there was something wrong just by looking at it,whereas a nurse or porter or whoever probably wouldn't.Electrocution is a common hazard of an electricians job so it would save the HSE's ass more then if a nurse was electrocuted doing something that she is not paid to do.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 585 ✭✭✭MrDarcy


    Whatnext, I apologise could have been wrong with the report. Was working along side fitters, not electricians. MrDarcy, of course I would change a lightbulb myself. However lets just say there was something wrong with the light, and a nurse or porter attempted to change the lightbulb, and got electricuted? I'll say again, its to cover the HSE's ass.

    When did you last hear of someone in the private sector getting electrocuted while changing a light bulb??? This is the whole thrust of the problem, the whole focus as we can see is eternally on passing the book, covering the ass, making sure nobody is liable, so that layers of beaurocracy are then added into the most simple of activies in the workplace. If you are an able bodied person and you cannot change a lightbulb without injuring yourself or someone else, then the inescapable conclusion is that you are an absolute f*cking idiot, end of story and you shouldn't be working in a hospital in the first place.

    I'm an entrepreneur, how far do you think I'd get if I looked for guarantees and assurances and safety nets in relation to everything that I do in my business??? I'd get nowhere.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 949 ✭✭✭LoanShark


    I'd love to know how the eight hours were justified...To reset an alarm should take no more than ten minutes...
    The security guard should be doing his rounds on the hospital floor,instead of hiding behind the curtain in his 'security office' and therefor looking at the alarms should be part of his routine..If the system was any good, Then it would tell straight out where the fault is..

    It does fill me with rage, this whole 'Its not my job' attitude, My mother was a nurse and was telling about another nurse who was taking a patient down the hallway, in the middle of the hall there was some spillage and coming in another direction was a 'domestic'..The nurse said 'There is some spillage there,would you ever clean it up'...The Next day the nurse was called to the office and was questioned as to why she told the domestic to clean up the spillage as it wasn't her job to do so in the first place...The union and all were involved in the whole thing...

    I agree with the whole blank canvas approach to how industry and sectors in this country work..Start from scratch, Now when we've feck all else to do..


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2, Paid Member Posts: 24,639 ✭✭✭✭Cookie_Monster


    8 hours, 4 at double time

    so :

    Get call, drag self out of bed, shower, coffee, drive to hospital, look at alarm, fob receptionist/nurse/porter off with some excuse, coffee, play with alarm, coffee, wander around affected sector for the sake of it, coffee, flick reset switch, coffee and chat with anyone around, drive home, coffee, login to pc, email that work is done, look at watch, laugh out loud.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 585 ✭✭✭MrDarcy


    LoanShark wrote: »
    I'd love to know how the eight hours were justified...To reset an alarm should take no more than ten minutes...
    The security guard should be doing his rounds on the hospital floor,instead of hiding behind the curtain in his 'security office' and therefor looking at the alarms should be part of his routine..If the system was any good, Then it would tell straight out where the fault is..

    It does fill me with rage, this whole 'Its not my job' attitude, My mother was a nurse and was telling about another nurse who was taking a patient down the hallway, in the middle of the hall there was some spillage and coming in another direction was a 'domestic'..The nurse said 'There is some spillage there,would you ever clean it up'...The Next day the nurse was called to the office and was questioned as to why she told the domestic to clean up the spillage as it wasn't her job to do so in the first place...The union and all were involved in the whole thing...

    I agree with the whole blank canvas approach to how industry and sectors in this country work..Start from scratch, Now when we've feck all else to do..

    When we do get back to a blank canvas, the first question that I think needs to be asked, as is the case in any workplace, is, "who is in charge here???"...

    This notion of electricians trying to tell the management of any organisation how to run their business is downright rubbish. I'm all for consultation and partipation and engagement but after that process of communication has taken place, then a decision has to be made and is often the case, the decision will not suit everybody, but the fact that in the HSE, the actual decision is largely if not exclusively controlled by a party that is subject to that decision, is alien to most if not all private sector organisations.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,914 ✭✭✭danbohan


    Ha the toaster thing is daft!!!!However on a serious note, I have worked in Hospital maintenance before. With regard to the Fire Alarm, I think it is only right for the Electrician to be called. He has to check why it went off and a report has to be logged. It is simply Health and Safety proceedures. It is to cover the HSE's ass. As for a lightbulb and the most trivial of jobs, an electrician must do it because he is qualified to do it. Any elecrical jobs done by other personell, the HSE are still liable if anything goes wrong.As for the 8 hours, this is cheaper. Having somene on 24/7 is by far more expensive. The electrician who was supposed to be called in on the Sunday morning, could not go out the night before and at any hour of the night could have got called in. With regard to being paid double time, he is entitled to it. In terms of the 4 hours he was granted for a 20 minute job, if anything happens within those 4 hours it is included in the above.


    have you any idea how that statement you made seems total lunacy to people who live in real world ie those not in public sector . the goverment either this idiotic one or the alternative labour /fine gael (what an alternative! ) will not take on the public sector unions and destroy them once and for all and start rebuilding this country so that benifits all its citzens not just a group of pampered incompetents that make up the public service .


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 585 ✭✭✭MrDarcy


    danbohan wrote: »
    have you any idea how that statement you made seems total lunacy to people who live in real world ie those not in public sector . the goverment either this idiotic one or the alternative labour /fine gael (what an alternative! ) will not take on the public sector unions and destroy them once and for all and start rebuilding this country so that benifits all its citzens not just a group of pampered incompetents that make up the public service .
    MrDarcy, of course I would change a lightbulb myself. However lets just say there was something wrong with the light, and a nurse or porter attempted to change the lightbulb, and got electricuted? I'll say again, its to cover the HSE's ass.

    He's cute enough though at the same time to take on the challenge of changing a light bulb when the cost of the health and safety considerations will be coming out of his own pocket. It's grand of course when someone else is paying for it, sure "health and safety" and all of that...


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 580 ✭✭✭shampon


    MrDarcy wrote: »
    "health and safety" and all of that...

    Health and Safety is the last refuge of the scoundrel. A maintenance worker known to me in the pubic sector was out of work sick, for four years with a shoulder injury. The dude takes the piss, he ****s off at three o clock everyday and is in the pub at ten to one every lunchtime. Yet he creams a salary of 450 a week, plus whatever overtime and benefits he gets, you could hire two graduates and pay them 225 a week for what this fat, incompetent slug does for a living...he is a waste. And he always, ALWAYS hide's behind H&S but does stupid things to save time like carrying cookers without a trolley...****ing waste


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