Unions claim HSE ‘disguising’ full scale of job losses planned
Date Published: 16-Aug-2010
By Darragh McDonagh
The Health Service Executive (HSE) is disguising plans to axe 1,000 frontline jobs across the HSE West area in its negotiations over proposed healthcare cuts, according to trade union representatives.
The termination of 1,000 temporary contracts was included in the recommendations of a recent report commissioned by the HSE to identify cost-saving measures as it seeks to recoup a €91m budget overspend by 2011.
HSE management has claimed that this figure has been reduced to 300 following negotiations with health union officials under the auspices of the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) at Merlin Park on Friday.
However, the reduction in the number of proposed job losses has been branded by trade unions as a “PR exercise” to mask the full extent of its plans to slash 1,000 posts from frontline services.
“The HSE avoided a huge PR nightmare last Friday by successfully hiding plans for 1,000 frontline job losses and disguising them as reconfigurations of certain services,” said Cllr Colm Keaveney, SIPTU organiser for the West of Ireland.
“If they say that they are reducing home help by 10%, for example, and there are 800 home helps,” continued Cllr Keaveney, “that’s the equivalent of 80 jobs. They managed to avoid some things that are politically unpalatable.”
He said that the reduction in the number of frontline workers by 1,000 as outlined in the Mott McDonald report was still on the table as the HSE seeks to achieve break even status by the end of the year.
Negotiations will continue at a range of venues in the HSE West region over the next two weeks as unions attempt to identify areas in which alternative savings can be made in order to protect jobs and frontline services.
HSE management has told unions that it will proceed with the swingeing array of cutbacks unilaterally if they fail to identify alternative cost-saving measures before September 1.
Read more in this week's Connacht Sentinel