Student Nurses to strike

Student nurses are threatening to take industrial action in protest at Government moves to cut their pay.

The student nurses’ pay is to be cut and eventually phased out. Students currently get 80% of the minimum rate staff nurse salary during a nine-month placement in hospitals.

Under the pay cut plan, student nurses would see their pay fall cumulatively by 65% up to 2014 and be paid no salary at all from 2015, according to their union, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO)

The INMO said 6,000 student midwives and nurses in training will hold a lunchtime protest in 13 hospitals across the country on February 9.

This will be followed by a march and rally in Dublin on February 16.

The five main political parties are to be lobbied for their views on the planned student pay cuts. Nursing students are also to be balloted on industrial action up to and including strike action.

The INMO said it viewed the pay cut plan as an imposition of ‘slave labour.’