Health employers and residential care staff will meet today in the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) in an attempt to avoid a strike in residential homes for people with intellectual disabilities.
IMPACT - the trade union representing the care workers - claims employers are discriminating against the intellectual disability sector and that the Government has refused to implement an agreed new pay deal.
The union says the refusal to introduce the deal means staff in residential homes caring for people with intellectual disabilities are now paid between £89 and £136 a week less than staff who perform identical work in children homes.
IMPACT says the two groups have always shared a common qualifications, pay and grading structure.
IMPACT national secretary Mr Kevin Callinan said: "They [health employers] say this is a matter for benchmarking. But they have already implemented this interim pay and professionalisation deal for identical staff in child care and the sensory disability sector.
"We want to avoid a situation where front-line care staff are forced to strike. But staff won’t accept a situation where they, and the people they serve, are treated as second-class citizens," he said.
Staff overwhelmingly backed industrial action over the issue in an IMPACT ballot last year.
Meanwhile, SIPTU has served strike notice to take effect on Friday, January 18 2002 at all health agencies in the intellectual disability sector, on behalf of Houseparents, Assistant Houseparents and Care Assistants.
SIPTU’s National Industrial Secretary, Mr Matt Merrigan said: “we are taking this action because the Health Service Employers’ Agency (HSEA) has failed to enter into meaningful negotiations on a claim for the maintenance of an already well established pay relationship for the grades in question with their counterparts - Child Care Workers - in the rest of the health sector. “The HSEA is attempting to do away with the pay parity for Houseparents and Assistant Houseparents as well as the national rate for Care Assistants, which was set by Arbitration less than eighteen months ago," he said.