The Nurses.

i think there is some confusion here, i was talking specifically about the offer the employers made to unions, basically saying that for the nurses that they pay anomaly affected, THEY would get the increased allowance. NOT al the other nurses working in the system,

this is what i mean when i say it basically institutionalises the idea that nurses should get paid less then the childcare worker

as for your second point......i dunno if it does it not, i'll tell you in a few months

seriously though, when a job has increased stress levels, increased repsonsibility etc etc, normally what happens is that people get paid more. thats why, to use and example, CEO's et shedloads while data inputters get considerable less.
over the past number of years the workload, responsibility and educational requirements to be a nurse, have shot up, but with NO pay increase, this leads to the situation we have now, where u have a lot of angry nurses, who feel undervalued etc workin the system.

but you see we don;t have a job for life, you only have to look across the water to the NHS where layoffs are common and from friends I have over there, it is increasingly difficult to get work as a nurse, even though they have a nursing shortage in real terms. also i'm not permanent staff, thats a misnomer. I might be wrong, but i think this is down to the employment ceilings introduced by the employers.

the same goes for overtime, there isn't the overtime bonanza that people seem to think. if you were dedicated and did overtime (if it was even availible) every month or week, sure you could come out with a few grand extra, but i'm talking 4 or 5 more, not 15k. as well as that, after working the week, your that knackered, both physically and emotionally that going back in to do overtime is the last thing on your mind.

timmywex wrote:

i think they do great work but........

the 10% increase is a non runner for me and the government are not going to give it either, if they get it,all state employees will want it,

the 35 hour week tough i think would be ok and wouldnt mind them getting that, no problem there

the HSE dont want them on strike either tough, there's another group threatning it at the moment aswell

could you explain why the 10% is non-runner for you?

and just to say, i deffo don't want to be on strike or anything like it right now either. its a whole world of hassle

Nurse_Baz, you are not gonna get alot of sympathy here, the rest of us work in jobs where if we dont like the pay and conditions, we go look for a different job. I know alot of nurses and sure, they do a hell of a job, but when they start moaning at me I give them the same advice..."go do something else".

IMO the nurses should be given their pay rise and the Govt. should try and encourage a few more people to become nurses in order to allow the workload on nurses to be lessened. Tired and stressed people make mistakes. In the private sector that = lost money. In the health service that = dead people. Forget about it encouraging the rest of the civil service to look for a pay rise. IMO there's no comparison between pen pushers in the various departments and the critical work done by nurses and junior doctors. There needs to be a financial incentive to attract good people to stressful and even dangerous jobs. Firefighters, Gardai directly involved in fighting drug gangs and nurses should be paid more than their fellow civil servants.

pred racer wrote:

Nurse_Baz, you are not gonna get alot of sympathy here, the rest of us work in jobs where if we dont like the pay and conditions, we go look for a different job. I know alot of nurses and sure, they do a hell of a job, but when they start moaning at me I give them the same advice..."go do something else".

i can totally see your point here, i worked in the private sector for quite a while myself, and as previously noted, even ran a business.. but i was never one to go along with the put up or shut up mentality.

i love my job, and throughly enjoy what i do, yeah its ****ty and stressful sometimes. emotionally its draining all the time. but there can be great moments. i really don't want to do anything else.......and why should i be forced to.

again i ask, whats wrong with people looking to improve their conditions? to hear some people within the private sector talk, you'd think that it was all a big share and share alike, altruistic love in, but its not. it appears that a lot of you are in jobs that you really don't like very much, but are kinda stuck there (mortgages,rent, loans etc need to be paid) and i'm not knocking that, but please don't try and talk down to, or patronise those of us who actually enjoy our work, and want to do better out of it.

for those (not you pred racer) that have called nurses greedy, u just think about the last time u were in hospital, or someone close to you was, and see if that holds any water. when i'm regularly out of work late because i took an extra 15 minutes with your dying granny, or held your dads hand for 2 hours while a doctor explained to him that he would be dead in 2 months, think again about some of the bull**** thats been posted here about nurses being greedy

timmywex wrote:

yes, i do realise there is an issue with junior people reporting to other nurses getting paid more but think there are other ways of sorting this out

well.......... 6 years ago we tried to do that, then in benchmarking round 1, then again in benchmarking - towards 2016, then again throught the Health services own procedures for dealing with disputes. its not like this has just crept up on anyone......we've been talking about this for a long time now.

the same goes for the 35 hour week, it was early 80's when the Labour Court said that nurses should be the first to get it. thats a long time coming, meanwhile, all other grades of health professional of our level, and below, have gotten it.........

so when 20 odd years of talking gets you no where what do u do?

“they are off cleaning out toilets and doing other such work that others should be doing.”

Why on earth would a nurse clean a toilet? Don’t they have people to do that? And would it not be totally unhygienic for a nurse that is handling a patient to be mucking about in a toilet?

personally im fully in support of the nurses. i cant name any sector , public or private, that'd wait 27 years to get the same working hours as everyone else in their industry. and as to the wages its funny how everyone in the media is screaming about the increase but dont want to talk about the fact 46% of health expenditure is spent on administrators, who by the way should be the ones answering the phones and liasing with other labs and hospitals not nurses.

TBH the thing thats bothering me the most is the media reaction to it. its the most biased demonizing bile ive ever heard, particularly claire byrne on newstalk. the thick bitch actually compared opening the door or answering the phone once or twice in newstalk to the extracontractual work the nurses are made do on a daily basis. im sure newstalk's receptionist is delighted to know dennis obrien can sack her at anytime cause clair's willing to do her work for free:rolleyes:
there's something really sinister going on here with what looks like corporate ireland looking to crush union representation by an orchestrated campaign against the nurses when anyone whos actually been in a hospital knows the only people your likely to see are nurses and junior doctors. i mean has anyone actually seen an administrator? what do these ****ers do to deserve 7 billion a year??
and the patronising manner in which the debate is conducted. theyre either "saints" and " angels " or money grabbing bitches. well im sorry but I Thought they were professionals and as such as entitlled to sue for redress like everyone else. just because half the posters that post here are celtic tiger morons who dont know what a recession is and think the working condidtions they have just appeared out of thin air doesnt mean there are sectors out there, public and private, which are based on continual abuse and exploitation. and people in those professions have every right to do everything in their power to address the situation.

i think the nurses shouldve gone on actual strike from day one! but then again we wouldnt have seen the scaremongering from the HSE about how the work to rule (which by the way just means you do what your PAID to do) was causing such "dificulty". maybe the HSE would be better off explaining why day to day running of a health service involves depending on people doing work that ISNT their responsibility whilst simultaneously keeping on detrius like the entire 11 ex health boards at a cost to the tax payer of over 1 million a year on just the heads alone till they retire and the jobs cease to exist. HELLO! ever heard of redundancy? justs give the ****ers two weeks pay for every year they were there and thats the end of it, but no, harney has to give em jobs for life with bench marking .

christ im sorry but im just so angry by the ignorant comments by posters and the media on this issue. like anyone could pay you enough to be puked on by a heroin addict or end up on a six months course of drugs cause some scumbag with HIV attacked you in A & E with a syringe he dragged out of his own arm:mad:

its not a "vocation" its a profession and these people have got the short end of the stick for over two decades. FFS WW1 and WW2 together were resolved shorter than this dispute. theyre only asking for what they deserve and if the money's hard to come by sack a few administrators. at 70k ago it shouldnt take that many to make up the difference. christ knows nobody'd miss them !

and dont start me on the "go elswher if your not happy" crap. nurses are the ONLY profession that are still emmigrating. practically 90% are gone in two years!

Steyr wrote:

They knew they type of **** they were going to have to deal with so **** em, Money grabbing bitches.

Keep it civil please.

Honestly, while I sympathise to an extent on the pay issue and the work-time issue, I actually think that they should cop on and realise that they are one small part of a much larger civil service and that they should work within the same necessary structures as the rest of said service.

Really, you'd swear they existed in a vacuum apart from the rest of the economy.