SIPTU Warns Over Contract Workers

There's industrial unrest looming this month as the trade union SIPTU has stated that it will not accept contract or agency workers being employed to replace health workers who leave as part of nationwide cost-cutting measures.

The union has said that replacing the 4,000 staff, which the HSE wants to leave the health service by the end of November with short-term contract workers, will not be acceptable to its members.

Responding to the Dáil plan to offer thousands of staff voluntary redundancy - as proposed by the HSE at a meeting with health service unions, the Acting Head of SIPTU's Health Division, Paul Bell, said that the SIPTU would not accept any "backfilling" of the service with contract workers.

He also said that the HSE appeared to have no idea how the health service would function with 4,000 fewer staff.

"It is another black day for the health service. At the meeting today we received no idea as to how the health service will be maintained with 4,000 fewer staff.

"There is no coherent plan to manage the changes that will result from this voluntary redundancy exercise," Paul Bell said.

The plan prepared after consultation with the Departments of Health and Finance envisages that thousands of clerical, administrative and support staff would leave the service by the end of November.

"There is no provision for the hole that will be left in the service when these people have departed.

"SIPTU will not accept the backfilling of the service by contract or agency staff.

"These cuts are not in breach of the Croke Park Agreement as they are voluntary but they are dictated solely by budgetary considerations rather than the needs of patients and those who depend on a properly functioning health service," Paul Bell said.

(BMcC/GK)