AMBULANCE CREWS MAY STRIKE AGAIN
LOCAL ambulance crews, who took part in the nationwide day of industrial action last Monday as part of their ongoing dispute over union recognition, have warned that there may be further stoppages.
Members of the National Ambulance Association Representative Association (NASRA), which is a branch of the Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA), staged the work stoppage which ran from 7am to 5pm.
Norman Haggan of NASRA’s north east committee said that the HSE were refusing to engage with NASRA and the only response they got was through a solicitor.
He was one of a number of local ambulance personnel who braved the icy conditions on Monday morning to picket outside the gates of the Louth County Hospital.
NASRA represents 500 ambulance personnel nationally, including around 40 in the north east, and members say that the HSE stopped deducting their union subscriptions at source, forcing them to set up direct debits.
Norman explained that contingency plans were in place so that ambulance cover would be available in cases of emergency.
They would be providing cover for all emergency cases where people’s lives were at risk but wouldn’t be responding to less urgent calls or routine work such as hospital transfers unless they were ‘ time sensitive’.
He said that there maybe further stoppages in the coming weeks unless impasse is ended.
The HSE maintains that ambulance personnel are ‘well represented through agreed industrial relations processes’ and that it recognises Siptu, Unite and Fórsa as representatives of staff.
‘Recognition of other associations or unions would undermine the positive engagement that exists and would impair good industrial relations in the National Ambulance Service. It is a well-established principle of public policy that fragmentation of union representation in the public sector is not in the interests either of the public or of workers. For that reason where grades of employees already have strong representation rights - as is the case in the National Ambulance Service - it is not appropriate for employers to recognise break-away unions. Recognising break-away unions has a destabilising effect on good industrial relations.’