Irish nurses vote to accept pay and hours deal - just

The Irish Nurses' Organisation has announced the result of their ballot over the deal to settle the pay and hours dispute - their members have voted by 54% to 46% to accept the deal.

The most significant thing about this ballot is the turnout. Many union ballots in the UK struggle to get above 20% or so, but 70% of the INO 's 35,000 members took part in the vote. That's a tribute to the high level of involvement and commitment to the dispute amongst the union's membership, I guess, and is a target to aim for if and when UNISON and other health unions ballot over our pay campaign.

Secondly, the close margin. It's clear that the proposals represent a significant gain - a reduction in working hours with no loss of pay, and a 10% pay rise over the course of two years. However, the deal doesn't deliver even half of the nurses' demands, and the remaining issues and claims are now mostly put in the hands of 'independent' experts and parthership bodies.

So why was it accepted? Without being able to get any first-hand reports from those involved, it seems to me that the threat by the employers, the HSE, to dock all nurses 13% of their pay if the dispute and the work-to-rule continued must have played a large part in getting them to vote to accept the proposals. The nurses have got this deal by a combination of effective action short of strikes, like refusing to do administrative tasks which don't form part of their nursing duties, and short stoppages targetted at different hospitals each time. Everyone has taken action, but no-one has had to lose much pay in the dispute so far. If the deal on the table was rejected, then everyone would have been facing pay stoppages, and the only course open to the unions would have been to up the ante and go for more, and longer, strikes. Whether that tactic would have yielded enough extra success to justify the pain would have been the calculation being made by 35,000 nurses this week.

The Psychiatric Nurses Association ballot result won't be known until June 5th. Perhaps psychiatric nurses take longer to make up their minds. But the decision by the INO's members is already being implemented, and the work-to-rule is being called off tomorrow.

It will be interesting to see what the Irish left makes of the dispute. Getting half of what you demand isn't a defeat, but I'm not sure it's a victory either. However, with such a large 'no' vote, it's clear that the INO's membership is still very much in the mood for a fight over their hours and pay, and if the employers show any sign of backsliding on the commitments in the deal I suspect we could see the dispute re-opening. Perhaps the best assessment of the dispute is 1-0 up at half time?