Five Ways You Can Help The Nurses
Brian Leeson, Éirígí’s local election candidate for the Dundrum area, is encouraging people to pro-actively support the nurses and their fight for a better public health service. His call comes as nurses affiliated to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation continue their preparations for a twenty-four hour strike on Wednesday (January 30). If an agreement is not reached with the Fine Gael-led government additional strike days are scheduled to follow on February 5th, 7th, 12th, 13th and 14th.
Speaking from Ballinteer, following the door-to-door distribution of leaflets supporting the nurses , Leeson said,
“A vicious circle has now developed in the health service where low nursing pay has led to under-staffing and under-staffing has created working conditions that nurses aren’t willing to work in for low pay. The only way to break this cycle is by increasing the pay each nurse is paid and increasing the number of nurses in the overall health service.
In years gone by, nursing was often described as a ‘vocation’, which was essentially used as a reason to justify low wages. Modern nursing is a graduate level profession, a fact which should be reflected in pay and conditions.
This strike is about much more than just pay. It’s about the value that our society places on the public health service and on those who work in it. Tens of thousands of nurses are taking a stand for themselves, their patients and the overall health service. The general public need to get behind them and put pressure on the government to give the nurses the improvement in pay and conditions that they need to their jobs in a sustainable manner.
In the longer term the current two-tier HES-led model needs to be scrapped and replaced with a new single-tier, publicly-funded Irish National Health Service. No Republic worthy of the same would willingly facilitate and encourage private corporations to profit for sickness, disease and tragedy.”
FIve Ways To Support The Nurses
Sign the INMO petition at https://sign.standwithus.ie/sign
Use you social media platforms to publicly show your support for the nurses
Contact your local government TDs and Councillors to demand justice for the nurses
Attend local and national protests, meetings and other solidarity events
Encourage your family, friends and workmates to do point 1-4 above.