Do you think nurses will get their payrise?

The millionaire consultants using publicly paid nurses as their unpaid help probably isn't great for morale..

Miike wrote: »

Do you think nurses are being unreasonable asking to be paid the extra 12% so that they're on the same level as other healthcare team members like OT Physio or Social Work?

Nurses have objectively tougher jobs than all of the above and have longer working weeks. This rhetoric of BUT THEY HAVE OVERTIME! AND PREMIUMS! is ****ing bananas. So does everyone else in the HSE.

*Everybody* doesn't get paid overtime and premiums, I don't even get paid to be on call yet it is still expected of me and I do it.

A question, if nurses have their base salary raised by 12% to match AHPs (it is unfair in my eyes to blanket raise for all grades without addressing the 2 tier pay system penalising new graduates, they are the ones leaving the country after all) will nurses be willing to forego the educational and salary allowances that they currently receive that the AHPs don't?

I don't know about OT, physio or social work as you listed but none of the few hundred people working in my discipline have any of the following, off the top of my head, open to them:

Paid final year college placement,
Opportunities to have master fees paid for them and do them while retaining increment benefits.
Extra pay allowances for post grad qualifications.
Extra pay allowances for specific units/locations.
Many more ways of advancing their career and increasing remuneration, either by going down the managerial route (multiple CNMs of various grades in every ward and dept without even considering the higher managerial grades) or via specialisation (CNS and ANP).

Obviously not every nurse receives all of these but they are there to be availed of. Not so for others, perhaps that is why there is a base salary disparity, to account for the lack of advancement options others have over the course of their career? Somehow I doubt all of those allowances would be given up in lieu of higher base pay.

The primary focus should be to end 2 tier pay, a 12% pay rise isn't much to encourage a new graduate to stay in the country if they are still on 10% less than staff on the old pay scheme.

lawred2 wrote: »

Well when the contribution doesn't cover the actuarial cost of the pension then it's fair to consider it meager

An employees conts should not cover the whole cost, as the employer should be contributing as well.

You seem to imply that a PS pension cont should cover the entire cost of their pension?

lawred2 wrote:

Well when the contribution doesn't cover the actuarial cost of the pension then it's fair to consider it meager

What does this mean? Can you break it down with figures?

Olivia Munns Bum wrote: »

I'm not making a mockery of their skills or intelligence but its hardly medicine.

General nursing doesn't need to be a degree level qualification. I'll stick by that.

Well lets hope you never need their skills in ICU

Berserker wrote: »

Nail on the head on that one. The conditions are a major issue. Not sure what can be done to improve them in the short term though.

the conditions may be shocking

that's not the stated goal of this strike however

Berserker wrote: »

Yeah, hospital consultants, who've spend well over ten years training, working sixty hour weeks, for a minimum hourly wage and stay here to practice instead of moving to the likes of the USA, where they can double their salary, are the real problem.

that's called missing the point

I've no issue with consultant remuneration. I have an issue with an Irish system that sees consultants using public staff and facilities for their private business.

And those working within the health service are acutely aware of it.

So what will we do if nurses do get the 12% pay increase across the board and young nurses continue to travel and emigrate anyway?

€300m will be coming out of the healthcare budget and the conditions and under staffing won't have improved.

iamwhoiam wrote: »

Because nurses salaries are only a percentage of the spend .

You mean a percentage of the overspend ?

Deleted User wrote: »

Just heard on radio that it’s going to cost €80 odd million to move staff to the new children’s hospital. WTAF??

i think id be more concerned about its escalating construction costs more than anything, at this rate, it wouldnt surprise me if its final bill was 3 billion

1641 wrote: »

You mean a percentage of the overspend ?

Dont forget the top brass of the HSE on massive salaries.

The current projected overspend of eight hundred million euro on the possible "white elephant" children's hospital would do as lot for nurses, streamlining services,improving conditions in Emergency Departments and wards and getting Primary Care Centres working to full potential.

Tell me how wrote: »

Are nurses the only group affected by the national cost of living?

Not at all, I never claimed that they were - indeed I referenced other strikes in recent years, such as the LUAS strike a number of years ago, as analogues. This isn't about gross pay in one sector, it's about a combination of take-home pay being hit by a very unprogressive taxation system and a constantly spiralling cost of living leading to a reduction in purchasing power, and I'm arguing that since the government is determined not to cave on pay rises, they should instead cast aside their neoliberal "mug free marketz" ideology and directly intervene to bring the cost of living down across the board. Tackling council rates and other fees businesses have to pay, insurance costs for businesses driving prices up, sky high rents, lack of social housing, low state subvention to public transport leading to yearly price hikes - all of these things could be dealt with either directly or indirectly through legislation, and would ultimately do a lot to ease pressure on pay in both the private and public sector.

The government are always going on about how Ireland needs competitive wages, but why do they seem to think that a competitive cost of living is not part of that equation? It's easy to suggest that upward pressure on wages is the result of personal greed, but more often than not it stems directly from spiralling costs of living or falling purchasing power.