The possibility that no public service pay agreement will be in place to follow the current deal when it expires at the end of next year has been raised by Fórsa at a meeting of ICTU’s Public Service Committee, which represents most unions with members in the public sector.

A number of HSE grades, including environmental health officers, biochemists, and pharmacy and clinical measurement grades, are to get enhanced annual leave arrangements thanks to a deal painstakingly negotiated by Fórsa.

Measuring hospital waiting lists and the numbers of patients on trolleys is a crude approach that “leads to reactive and pressure-based planning” of our health services, according to Fórsa’s head of health Éamonn Donnelly.

Just one in every five people who experience sexual harassment in their workplace report it, according to a new survey by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU).

Fórsa has again criticised the “lazy narrative in media and political circles,” which constantly criticises health service admin and managerial staff.

Average private sector wage growth was three times higher than in the public service in the year to September 2019. New figures, published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) last week, showed that average weekly earnings rose by 3.9% in the private sector and 1.3% in the civil and public service.

The HSE recently published its new ‘red weather event policy,’ which outlines protocols for emergency weather conditions. The policy covers leave and payment arrangements for HSE and Section 38 staff during ‘red weather events’.