In todays Irish Times there is an excellent piece on the new Croke Park agreement. It states that while the full text of the revised Croke Park II agreement will not be available until later this week, the document will contain a significant number of changes compared with the proposals rejected by union members last month.
Some of the largest reworking of the agreement has been;
- Nursing staff will now retain their double-time payment for Sunday work. However, they will have to move from a 37½ to 39-hour week.
- The potential for generating savings by transferring work carried out by doctors to nurses will be further examined with the funds being prioritised to maintain the current time and one-sixth twilight payment for nurses working in the evening.
- All existing flexible working arrangements for nursing and midwifery grades will be maintained, while a senior staff nurse increment will be restored from July 1st, 2013, for all eligible, since 2009.
- For doctors the Government has given a commitment that it will comply with European rules on working hours by the end of 2014.
- Overtime payments for doctors will continue to operate at double time on Sundays and public holidays and time-and-a-half for those earning under €35,000 per year and time-and-a-quarter for those earning above €35,000.
- New entrant consultants, who earn 30% less than those senior doctors appointed before last autumn, will be exempted from the new salary reduction aimed at those receiving above €65,000 per year.
- Teachers who will lose about €1,700 in supervision and substitution payments will, under the revised agreement, receive a gross additional payment of €650 in school year 2016/2017.A further gross additional payment of €650 will be included in the incremental scale in the school year 2017/2018.
- A group is also to be established to consider and report on the fixed-term and part-time employment in teaching. Teaching unions said as a first task, the group will report on reducing the qualification period for the granting of a contract of indefinite duration from four years to three to take effect for 2014/2015.
We will await the full text document later int he week for full details of the amendments.
