Frontline workers to form new union - RT News
No!! They will get them from the members instead.
The 24/7 Frontline alliance was founded without the approval of the big ICTU unions. The reason was that David Begg and ICTU were about to offer the government the shift allowances and weekend payments of frontline workers to save the pay of the majority of their members. It served its purpose to ward off those particular cuts but it sowed the seeds of this new organisation. The vast majority (over 85%) of firefighters voted against the Croke Park Deal (which should please many on here). Our beef was mainly that the croke park deal was a one size fits all solution to possibly the most diverse group of workers in the state. The workers being specifically aimed at here are Firefighters, Paramedics and the psychiatric nurses. They have been under represented (and in many cases misrepresented) by the bigger PS unions such as SIPTU and IMPACT. This union is specifically for emergency service workers and will be staffed by personel who have done the job themselves.Was there not a Frontline Union formed last year when all the cuts to public service wages began, it had the Guards, Nurses, Prison Officers, Ambulance drivers, Fire personnel. If memory serves they said they were going to fight the wage cuts, service cuts and the way the Public service had been vilified in the media, they started off really gung ho! But after a few weeks imo became smug and arrogant claiming they should be regarded as separate PS workers and exempt from cuts because of what they do. Then the army were told to pull out of this escapade by the Govt which they did then the bold Dermot Ahern TD Minister for Justice told the Guards that if they acted the bo**ix "Frontline" leaders could be sacked from the force and maybe arrested and the Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy had a quiet word in the same leaders ears and then silence, in fact the silence was deafening compared to what had come in the preceding weeks. I myself felt a deal had been done with the arms of the state that are needed if trouble comes down the line such as The Army, The Guards, and The Prison officers the rest can whistle, so a bit of surprise to see it is starting again wonder how long this will last?
Irish Bob. Our aim here is to have a union that represents frontline emergency workers. The people involved are also frontline workers (or have been) and know our job. We are currently being represented by those who have no clue what our job entails. Our emergency services are being run in to the ground. Even during the "boom" time we received little in the way of improved services. From my own experience we currently have only one more emergency ambulance in the Dublin Fire Brigade than we had in 1986. Now that is under threat and neither SIPTU or IMPACT have done a tap about it. Suddenly with the threat of this new union they are both trying to jump on to the bandwagon and claim credit for the work that the crews on the ground have done. We don't see ourselves as elite but you must acknowledge that we are not the same as 9-5 clerical staff. Our needs and theirs do not converge just because we have the same employer. The emergency services in this country are Hugely understaffed compared to international best practice and that is something we will fight to remedy.
Why do I get a mental image of Mr Burns when I read this. I guess we know which side of the fence your ancestors sat on during the 1913 lockout. Perhaps you should employ a boy to clean your chimney so that you don't have to avail of the services of us scum sucking leeches. petunia
Getting through the hospital system would be very difficult without nurses. Try it sometime!!
difficult with nurses too when they work to rule and use patients in their blackmail
This is great news. The current trade union leadership is part of the problem. It is part of the political status quo. This will shake up the trade union movement. SIPTU is not a militant union, it panders to government.
You understand what a work to rule means right? It means you work to what it says in your contract and nothing more. What does that tell you is going on in hospitals?
Sorry but all it tells me PS workers live in a world circa 1890, where all duties are somehow listed in detail. You'll be hard pressed to find similar contracts in the private sector, where workers are expected to be flexible in terms of both duties and working hours.firefly123 said:
I work in the public service as a front-line professional.
