The IMPACT union's refusal to exempt residential childcare centres from its strike has given a new urgency to the search for a settlement to this dispute. Already, outpatient services and community care provided by paramedics have been withdrawn and the overstretched childcare services brought to breaking point. Patients have been discharged from specialist units like the National Rehabilitation Centre and others, requiring many surgical procedures, face indefinite delays.
Thankfully, the strike has not yet affected emergency cover in the major acute hospitals and even elective admissions have not been seriously disrupted for patients who do not require pre or post operative physiotherapy. However, that situation could change very quickly if, as expected, almost 2,000 radiographers and laboratory technicians in SIPTU vote for strike action on Monday and join their 3,500 IMPACT colleagues on the picket lines.
No one denies that paramedics perform difficult and vital work in helping people to overcome serious disabilities, or to recuperate fully from serious illnesses. The strike has also highlighted the scandalously low wages of house parents in childcare centres for the vital services they provide.
These professionals can evoke a powerful sense of sympathy with the public, especially as they have also presented a strong case that the recent Labour Court recommendation to resolve the nurses dispute has not broken their traditional pay link with that profession. But paramedics should be wary of overplaying their hand. Claims for pay rises of up to 17 per cent will not win them sympathy in the private sector, where many workers have had to concede major changes in work practices for local bargaining increases worth three per cent or less where their employer is experiencing difficulties. The Government has not been slow to use the argument that more money for public sector workers means less will be available in tax concessions.
The Minister for Finance, Mr Quinn, has repeatedly warned that the paramedics' claim must be settled within the 5.5 per cent limit established with all other public service workers except the nurses. It is well. known that the real cost of the nurses settlement ran to well over ten per cent. And that is the crux of the problem.
Health managers are under orders not to enter talks where they have to concede the principle of parity with the nurses for paramedics. IMPACT's mandate is not to enter talks if it means surrendering the pay link. The Labour Relations Commission is urgently seeking a way of reconciling these positions so that both sides can at least be brought into the same room to discuss the substantive issue that divides them pay.
If it can do that, then the issues could be referred the linguistic inversion of Irish to the Labour Court or some other form of adjudication that might lead to a settlement. But time is running out for both sides. The electorate will have little patience with a Government that cannot implement an effective public service pay policy and little sympathy for health workers if they allow a pay claim to seriously disrupt essential services.