Irish nurses unions taking action over staffing levels

There's been lots of discussion in UNISON recently about the issue of safe staffing levels, and how to organise a campaign to mobilise members to defend staffing levels and fight job cuts. Much of the discussion has centred on how difficult it allegedly is to get staff to take action, especially in defence of jobs which are vacant as opposed to fighting actual redundancies. I'd find that argument easier to accept if it came from people who actually had organised fights against redundancies, but it too often sounds like an excuse: "We can't fight these cuts because the members won't follow our lead," say union officials who don't have any intention of giving such a lead in the first place.

For sure, it is easier to generate a campaign against job cuts when the affected posts are filled by our friends and colleagues - real people with families, mortgages and other responsibilities which make the prospect of losing their jobs something over which they effectively have no choice but to fight. However, it is simply not the case that effective fights cannot be built against proposals to cut "posts" as well as people.

In Leicester, we have in recent years faced threats to posts in both nursing and admin roles, with a major ward closure programme being put forward by the UHL a couple of years ago, and then an 'Admin and Clerical review' which initially proposed 300 job losses last year. In both cases UNISON worked with other unions to publicise the threat, and sought to mobilise members against the proposals. We did so simply because our members told us that the staff left behind would not be able to provide the same level of care to their patients, and that the posts, although vacant, were needed, and needed to be filled.

A fair assessment I think would be that we met with limited success. Some of the wards closed, although the hospital later re-opened two of them, admitting effectively that they (or the PCTs which commission our services) had miscalculated the need for hospital beds - and nurses - in Leicester. In the admin and clerical review, very few of the threatened 300 posts have been saved, but the Trust's plans to introduce typing pools to replace medical secretaries have largely been withdrawn. In both campaigns the union put together impressive arguments against the cuts, and made reasonably effective use of the media, and involved members to a limited degree through meetings, petitions and such like. Although some of the members had indicated a willingness to participate in industrial action, the view amongst the union reps was that it would not have been possible to organise industrial action in defence of jobs which were already vacant. As a result, despite union protests, it was possible for the UHL to simply delete the posts from their roster.

In contrast, Irish nurses in the last week have begun a campaign of industrial action at Sligo General Hospital, in protest at the termination of temporary nursing posts and other cutbacks. Although the posts were only temporary, 240 permanent members of the hospital's nursing staff took strike action last week demanding their re-instatement. A further strike planned for Thursday was postponed only because the Irish Health Service Executive agreed to put any further terminations on hold while an urgent referral to a Labour Court took place this week. The Irish Nurses' Organisation has issued a strong statement pledging to defend services to patients against the cuts, and demanding the reinstatement of all the temporary posts.

Nurses and other healthworkers in the UK will be watching the progress of the Irish nurses' latest dispute with interest. It is clear already though that the dispute proves that nurses, and by extension healthworkers generally, can be motivated to take industrial action in defence of temporary posts, and against cuts in patient services. The idea that such 'soft targets' for management make resistance impossible is something which union activists need to argue vehemently against. It is often not our members who are unwilling to fight against service cuts, but those who aspire to lead them.