IMPACT has told HSE management that it won’t accept proposals to withdraw the option for staff to take a pay reduction rather than increased hours under the Haddington Road agreement (HRA). The union’s national secretary Louise O’Donnell has advised members not to cooperate with the plan.

IMPACT and other unions have raised the issue with the health service group that monitors implementation of the HRA. Unions told the HSE that the move was a breach of the agreement and management is now expected to come back to the implementation group with a response.

The issue re-emerged earlier this month when the HSE’s HR director wrote to managers instructing them to withdraw the option of remaining on pre-Haddington Road hours.

Louise O’Donnell said unions were confident that this would be declared a clear breach of the agreement if the issue ends up in third party arbitration. “The agreement is absolutely clear that this option is there for staff. Management does not have the authority to re-write this or any other aspect of the deal,” she said.

In July this year IMPACT and other unions faced down the HSE when its ‘frequently asked questions’ document changed the wording of the HRA. The agreement says: “Management will allow persons to opt to remain on their current hours with appropriate pay adjustments for a period.” The HSE document had substituted the word “will” with “may.”

An assembly for workers in the community and voluntary sector takes place in Dublin’s Liberty Hall at 1.30pm on Monday 18^th November. Organised by the ICTU community sector committee, the meeting will address challenges to jobs, services and working conditions in the sector.

IMPACT deputy general secretary Kevin Callinan will be address the meeting, which will explore ways of increasing union membership and recognition in order to protect services and defend pay, working conditions and employment security in the sector.

SIPTU vice president Patricia King and researcher Brian Harvey, who authored the IMPACT-commissioned study of pay and conditions in the sector, will also address the meeting. And there will be contributions from workers and organisers.  

All community and voluntary sector workers are welcome to attend. Contact scurran@impact.ie for more information.

The Irish Association of Supported Employment (IASE) has launched a new three-year strategy to increase employment opportunities for people with disabilities. The plan aims to raise awareness of the supports available to employers who hire or retain employees with disabilities.

People with disabilities are only half as likely to be at work as the rest of the working-age population. But the ESRI says employment amongst people with disabilities could increase by more than 20% if the right supports were in place. Some 5,000 people with disabilities are currently in supported employment, in which individual supports are provided to enable them to access jobs in the mainstream labour market.

Minister Kathleen Lynch said the IASE plan was challenging but achievable. “People with disabilities are not looking for special treatment. They are looking for a fair chance to get or keep a job, prove their abilities and find ways of overcoming the barriers which workplaces or co-workers often unwittingly present. Many people with disabilities who do succeed in getting jobs often struggle in the early stages due primarily to a lack of appropriate support,” she said.

The IASE, a voluntary organisation that promotes employment opportunities for people with disabilities through supported employment, is core funded by the Department of Environment, Community and Local Government.

Most Irish physiotherapy departments are operating at 80% of 2007 staffing levels, with some as low as 35%, according to a new survey. Most of the vacancies are due to management’s failure to provide cover for maternity leave, according to the Irish Society of Chartered Physiotherapists (ISCP), which published the report at its conference earlier this month.

IMPACT member and ISCP president Jill Long (pictured) said staff reductions were hampering the profession’s capacity to avoid the need for patients to access expensive acute services. “In a profession that’s predominantly young and female, the non-filling of these posts is having a devastating effect on the services available to patients. For those admitted to hospitals, access to regular physiotherapy can reduce length of stay and enable patients to live active, confident and sociable lives within their communities,” she said.

The survey was carried out among public and voluntary health service physiotherapy managers across Ireland’s acute, community and voluntary services.

A HIQA report into child protection services in Kildare and West Wicklow has found that interventions for children at risk are “timely, effective and beneficial” and that social work practice is “respectful, rights based and needs-led.” However the report says a lack of resources continues to be a significant problem that causes delays and limits services.

IMPACT official Christina Carney said the findings demonstrated the scale of the challenge for child protection workers. “Staff are doing their utmost to deliver a crucial service and are doing outstanding work every day despite the resource difficulties,” she said.

The report also said service managers had developed “a culture of respect, support, inclusion and approachability.” Staff interviewed for the report said this had sustained social work teams through times of change and difficulty.

Irish labour costs have been stagnant since 2008, while the rest of the Eurozone has seen growth of over 8%, according to a new report by the trade union-backed Nevin Institute. Wages and Ireland’s International Competitiveness finds that, while private sector wages have been largely stable, Ireland has shown strong export improvement despite a difficult international trading situation.

The report by Rory O’Farrell concludes that Irish wages were not uncompetitive at the end of the boom as many businesses and economists claimed – otherwise it would not have been possible for the country to improve its export position so rapidly without a general fall in wages.

He says increases in nominal unit labour costs, the EU’s main wage-related competitiveness measure, were driven by inflation during the boom. Since 2008, a fall in that measure of labour costs was almost entirely due to a move away from the labour-intensive construction sector.

Geoff Rowden was an IMPACT member and a highly-respected child care worker who died earlier this month. His body was found below Mayo’s Mweelrea mountain after a four-day search. A keen and experienced hill walker, Geoff had taken a route overlooking Killary fjord. Mayo mountain rescue say he may have fallen on his way back down.

Geoff had previously worked in Naas before transferring to Moyle Crescent in Clondalkin. His loss will be keenly felt by his colleagues in Clondalkin and Naas. On behalf of IMPACT, we send our condolences to them and to Geoff's family.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.

Negotiations on the implementation of changes in public service certified sick leave arrangements, which emerged from a binding Labour Court process last year, are at an advanced stage with unions expecting agreement by the end of this month. Under the 2012 Labour Court recommendation the new terms will generally be in place on 1^st January 2014.

Union negotiators, led by IMPACT, are pressing a number of issues, which include:

• Ensuring that schemes for occupational illnesses or injuries remain unchanged
• Establishing a broad definition of ‘critical’ illness which, under the new arrangements, will attract paid leave for longer than ‘non-critical’ illnesses
• Minimising the amount of sick leave taken prior to 2014 that will be considered when calculating an individual’s new certified sick leave entitlements
• Establishing that a consultant will not be required to certify that an illness is ‘critical’ in all situations.

Under the new arrangements civil and public servants who suffer long-term critical illness or serious physical injury will still be able to take six months paid sick leave, followed by six months on half pay. This is because IMPACT and other unions successfully argued in the Labour Court against management proposals to cut this to six months full pay followed by three months half pay.

Unions also successfully resisted management plans to limit the arrangement to a single critical illness or serious injury in a public servant’s career.

In the case of non-critical illnesses, however, the new arrangements will halve certified sick leave limits to three months on full pay, followed by three months on half pay in any four-year period. New restrictions on the so-called ‘pension rate,’ a small pension-based income for those whose paid sick leave is exhausted, also means that no public servant will now receive any kind sick leave payment for more than two years.

Significant changes to uncertified sick leave have already been introduced under the Croke Park agreement.

LRC talks between Aer Lingus cabin crew and management continued through the night and concluded at 5am this morning (Friday). The settlement proposals that emerged would mean that the Shannon cabin crew base will be retained and that work on new transatlantic routes will be carried out by Aer Lingus employees if the proposals are accepted.

Under the proposals, the transatlantic operation would start with five crew and a comprehensive joint review would take place in July 2014 to consider patterns of traffic across the year and whether crewing arrangements should respond to seasonal factors.

IMPACT official Michael Landers welcomed the fact that the initial flights would have five cabin crew where possible.  "This was one of our key demands. However, cabin crew staff would prefer to work with five cabin crew rather than having the additional financial incentives outlined in these proposals. This dispute was never about money. The review that's been included in these proposals will, I'm sure, show that it is impractical to operate with less than five crew," he said.

IMPACT's cabin crew branch committee will meet later today to make arrangements to ballot members on the proposals and consider whether to make a recommendation.

The Labour Court has ruled that the public service recruitment and promotions moratorium can’t be used to stop fixed-term workers applying for permanent posts. An IMPACT member recently won €9,500 in compensation when the union successfully took up her case after Teagasc management told her she could not apply for a post.

The union successfully argued that this breached the 2003 Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Workers) Act. Among other things, the act obliges employers to inform temporary staff of permanent vacancies and allow them apply.

Read the Labour Court recommendation HERE.

IMPACT has denounced European Commission plans to weaken workplace health and safety protections. Union official and health and safety expert Dessie Robinson said  the proposals were a direct attack on workers’ rights, which risked increasing the number and severity of occupational accidents and illnesses.

The union says it will ask European trade union federations including the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) to put pressure on the EU to maintain and improve legal health and safety standards.

The new European Commission working document, Regulatory Fitness and Performance Programme (REFIT), says it aims to reduce the “burden” of regulation in health and safety, taxation, environment and other areas.

Specific measures in the area of workplace health and safety include a review of the EU health and safety directive and 23 related directives, which provide the legal framework for health and safety protections in Ireland and across Europe. The Commission has also decided not to proceed with planned directives on musculoskeletal disorders, display screens and environmental tobacco smoke.

Dessie, who is also a voluntary member of the board of the Health and Safety Authority, said the move would jeopardise health and safety and undermine public support for the EU.

“Last year there were 48 deaths and over 6,600 non-fatal injuries in Irish workplaces. Meanwhile, resources for health and safety inspection and enforcement are under immense pressure. Reducing legal protections is virtually guaranteed to make the problem worse and will do nothing to help the EU demonstrate its relevance to ordinary people as we approach next year’s European Parliament elections,” He said.

IMPACT’s central executive committee has approved a €100,000 donation to support Concern International’s work with refugees in north Syria and neighbouring Lebanon. The cash comes from the union’s developing world fund, made up of 3% of each member’s union subscription, which helps trade union solidarity and development projects around the world.

The two-year Syrian conflict has seen over 100,000 people killed and many more injured. There are more than four million people displaced within the country, plus another two million refugees in neighbouring countries like Lebanon.

Basic public services like water, sanitation, education and healthcare have virtually collapsed in parts of the country where hospitals and other facilities have sustained war damage and supply lines are disrupted. Thousands of public servants are working for free to try to provide services. In Lebanon, the huge numbers of refugees have put public service infrastructure under immense strain.

IMPACT’s contribution will specifically support Concern’s work in water, sanitation and education projects, which work with existing communities and public service providers to sustain services, maintained by local communities, into the future.

This is just one of many projects funded by IMPACT members through the union’s developing world fund, which has donated over €7 million to trade union and other development projects since its establishment in 1991.

You can find out more about Concern’s work in Syria HERE.