Administrative staff at HSE to escalate dispute over staffing levels

Managers and administration workers at the HSE are to step up their campaign of industrial action from next Friday in a dispute about staffing levels.

Fórsa, the union representing the staff, has informed the HSE that its members will expand the range of actions currently being taken as a part of a “work to rule” that has been ongoing since October 6th.

From the end of next week, the staff will decline to work unrostered weekends or bank holidays, not use work mobile phones outside of working hours except in emergencies and not take direction from agency workers filling higher grades.

The action will also include non-co-operation with a variety of internal reporting and reform projects.

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The union says there will be further escalations of the dispute on November 13th and 27th if it is not resolved.

The staff involved had voted by a very large margin in early August to take industrial action over a ban on recruitment in particular grades and the extensive use of agency staff.

Prior to the more recent announcement of the recruitment ban at the HSE, the two sides had been involved in talks at the Workplace Relations Commission on a wide-ranging framework document intended to address the key issues.

As part of that process, the HSE had committed to fill all vacancies in the relevant grades after September 1st and the union had agreed to suspend the action, but the process, and related agreements, broke down when the HSE announced its more widespread freeze on recruitment at the start of this month.

The union says the renewed action has been the result of “unilateral” moves on the part of the HSE, which the union’s head of health and welfare, Ashley Connolly, said demonstrated “an unwarranted and unfair disdain for the national industrial relations process”.

It is unclear the extent to which the action might impact on patient care, although the attendance of more administrative staff at weekends and managers over weekends and bank holidays had been something HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster had sought to encourage so as to facilitate the treatment by medical staff of greater numbers of patients overall.

The HSE said on Friday evening it had received notice from Fórsa regarding the industrial action planned for next Friday. “We regret that the action has been taken, and remain committed to continued engagement to resolve the matter,” a statement said.

“Throughout the Fórsa [action] we will continue to conduct risk assessments to monitor any likely impacts to services. Derogations will be sought through our dialogue with Fórsa, to ensure the protection of services, and to ensure that there is no risk to patients, or emergencies, throughout this dispute.”