Talks on plans to introduce scheduled weekend working for potentially more than 10,000 health service staff have been deferred after unions claimed the date clashed with annual conferences.
In one of the biggest policy changes in the health system in years, the HSE wants up to ten per cent of the workforce to be available for rostered weekend work.
HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster said last month that the organisation wanted to begin rostering more staff to work over weekends from the end of June.
Mr Gloster told reporters at the recent conference of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) that the HSE was ready to present proposals on the changes to trade unions and there would be an intensification of engagement over the coming weeks.
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However, he said he wanted to be clear that the HSE was moving in the direction of more weekend rostering and he had set a target of the end of June “to see visible evidence”.
The HSE had proposed talks on the changes should commence on Thursday, but unions pointed out that it clashed with annual conferences, such as that of nurses and midwives in Wexford.
The talks are expected to be rescheduled for another date.
When the HSE initially proposed the new work practice changes in February, the trade union Fórsa described the move as an “aggressive approach” and said that the health service must engage with staff through a previously agreed framework.
The union said it had consistently expressed its willingness to engage with management on the topic but no proposals had been forthcoming at either the local or national level.
In a memo to his senior managers in February, Mr Gloster said an extended working day, running between 8am-8pm and an extended working week, five days over seven days, could be applied to all staff employed or promoted since December 2008.
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Speaking at the IMO conference in April, Mr Gloster said he wanted up to 10 per cent of the entire workforce “to be rostered in a fair and respectful way at weekends to start to improve the level of routine operation of the health services” outside of the Monday-to-Friday period.
“So what I am talking about is the totality of the healthcare workforce being better distributed across the seven days of the week. My plan is, by the end of June, to arrive at a point where we will start to see the implementation of a stabilised roster across every weekend.”
He said the health service workforce had grown by 25 per cent over the last five years and there was “no evidence to say that we’ve got the best use out of everything by having it all condensed between Monday and Friday, and then be dependent on an on-call, valuable, system at the weekend”.
He said there was absolutely no reason why, for example, a rostered consultant on a public-only contract could not work in a hospital facility on a Saturday, doing routine and normal work as opposed to being on-call, and have an out-patient clinic supported by a clerical officer, nurse and an allied health professional, with access to diagnostics.
“And there is no reason why people leaving hospital can’t have access to community supports at the weekend,” he said.
