‘Sacked’ nurses offered low pay jobs

HSE attempts to save money by letting seven young Clare-based psychiatric nurses go will actually see the public body incur massive additional costs through hiring agency staff, according to Denis Meehan of the Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA).

 

Mr Meehan is secretary of the local branch of the PNA. He claimed morale among Clare’s psychiatric nurses is the lowest he has ever seen in his 33-year career, with many anxious to retire as soon as is feasible, such is their disillusionment after years of cuts.

Mr Meehan said the seven nurses were let go last Thursday but were offered their jobs back the following day, on 80% of the pay received previously, which is in line with Government plans to cut pay for new nurses.

“They were rang individually on Friday and asked to come back to staff the unit, but at 80%. In practice what they did was sack them on Thursday morning and they asked them back the following day at 20% less.”

He said none of the seven were interested in taking the job on the lower salary. “They weren’t and they couldn’t afford to do it anyway,” he commented.

Despite phone and email contact by The Clare Champion to the HSE, no response had been received at the time of going to press.

According to Mr Meehan, the attempts to save money are backfiring with the HSE paying out far more to agency workers than they would have if they had just kept on the seven nurses.

He said the agency staff are paid according to their experience, with most of them retired and commanding far higher salaries than the seven people who have just become unemployed.

“If you’re a first year you’re brought in at that level of HSE pay but if you’re retired you get a senior staff nurse’s pay and, on top of that, there’s about six percent of a fee going to the agency and they have to pay VAT as well,” Mr Meehan explained.

The difference in pay per nurse is quite significant, he said.

“The choice is to keep people on at the second point of the scale on €26,000 or €27,000 or bring in an agency nurse. If you bring in one of the retired nurses, and they are the ones who are nearly always coming in, you’re bringing them in at a rate of €48,000 plus the 6% agency fee and VAT.”

The nurses who have been let go are likely to work for the agency now, he says, where they will receive a higher wage than what they were being offered.

“There’s a probability that they will join the agency and, when they join the agency, they’ll come back at the second point of the scale, plus the six percent plus VAT on top of it. It’s way dearer than if they just brought them in and employed them.”

While he says that the agency nurses are of a high quality, there are issues with relying on this type of casual labour.

“A lot of the time when the agency are contacted they have no nurses to give, so then the units work short.

“If you’re working short, the care of the patient has to be affected. In Cois Mara there was a staffing level of four and it’s now gone down to three. It means the patients can’t be brought out on trips and there’s issues even with going to clinics and that, because there aren’t enough staff to bring them. A lot of the time appointments are cancelled.”

Due to cutbacks he says there is only a token community service left, with staff being used to bolster units, that are also short staffed.

Seventy five nurses have left since 2009 with only 15 taken on to replace them and things are expected to get worse during 2013.

“Between now and the end of the year we reckon around another 15 are going to retire without replacement. The HSE have, for any shortage or replacement of staff or sick leave, given a figure of 220 hours of replacement (cover) per week. Even since that figure came in we have 15 staff that have retired. You’d expect that if someone retires, the 220 would go up by 37 hours but it’s not happening. No one who retires is replaced and the levels are going down all the time.”

Perhaps inevitably staff morale has waned and he says he has never seen it at a lower ebb.

“I’m in the job 33 years and I’ve never, ever seen it as bad, it’s just on the floor at the moment. People just want to get as far as their retirement age and go. Every single nurse wants to retire at the earliest time they can.”