A STAND-OFF has emerged between the Health Service Executive (HSE) and health sector unions over plans for staff redeployment.
Talks between the sides ended in disagreement yesterday after unions objected to management proposals that would have provided for compulsory redeployment in some cases.
The issue is now expected to be considered in overall talks between the Government and unions on public sector pay and reform which begin on Wednesday.
The deputy general secretary of the Irish Nurses’ Organisation, David Hughes, said unions had proposed a voluntary redeployment scheme. He said unions would consider compulsory redeployment on a case-by-case basis where this was necessary but where there were insufficient volunteers. This had happened in the northeast and in the cancer programme.
However, he said unions did not want compulsory redeployment to become the default position throughout the health sector.
In a joint position paper as part of the talks with the HSE, the unions said redeployment should be voluntary. It also said safe patient care must inform all decisions on voluntary redeployment.
The document said in no circumstances could “a redeployment opportunity be promoted or ceded to where the receiving position would require the redeployed individual to work outside their scope of professional practice”.
The unions also proposed that “where an individual within six months of being redeployed finds the new assignment and/or location unsatisfactory they will be facilitated with a return to their original location, grade, group and category or an agreed equivalent alternative to it”.
The document also said the union Impact had agreed to a request from the HSE to attend the Labour Relations Commission in relation to reorganisation and it expected the issue of redeployment would be dealt with in those discussions.
This month the HSE had proposed that under any new arrangements to redeploy staff, it would initially seek volunteers but that compulsory transfers could be necessary if there were insufficient expressions of interest.