Better Health Care, Better Jobs is the national campaign of SIPTU’s Health Division. The aim of the campaign is to protect Ireland’s health service by fighting the drive to cut health budgets and privatise services.
Health sector workers, from all disciplines, are working in an environment that is suffering from the impact of greater cuts to funding, staffing levels and bed closures. This is resulting in a feeling of uncertainty for the future among workers in the public sector and also within the communities that depend on their services.
Our members are under constant pressure. Standards of care and patient safety are being compromised. We have to say stop.
Every worker, every service and every community is in the firing line of the relentless drive to cut and privatise essential health care jobs and services.Frontline health care workers are critical to the integrated health care teams in our communities, hospitals and care centres. They deserve decent jobs and a secure livelihood upon which to support themselves and their families.
Our main priority is to have the staff recruitment embargo lifted by the Minister for Health
We demand that:
- taxpayers money is spent sensibly on direct public service employment, not for propping up private companies or contractors.
- oppressive elements of FEMPI are repealed by Government.
- pay recovery is at the heart of any future negotiations of national public service agreements.
- investment in staff is prioritised allowing all hospital workers to meet ever increasing public and patient demands
- adequate funding in Section 39 organisations is ring fenced ensuring that services are not based continuity of care, not on the race to the bottom.
Workers with better jobs deliver better health care it is as simple as that. But now the quality of our jobs is being dismantled.
Bad jobs are not just bad for workers; they are bad for communities and the quality of our services too.
If you log into SIPTU Health plus you can download our Activist Tool Kit. The kit is designed to give members access to the resources they need to run a successful workplace campaign. It is a one stop shop with tips for running effective campaigns and how to educate, agitate and organise with free downloadable posters, flyers and information sheets.