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CALL CENTRE WORKERS who answer 999 emergency calls are threatening strike action over wages and working conditions.
A majority of staff based at the Munster Regional Communications Centre, which dispatches fire services for six counties in the province, are expected to be ballotted for industrial action in the next week by their union, Siptu.
This will go up to and including strike action.
If strike action goes ahead, it could have serious consequences for people in need of urgent help in Limerick, Cork, Clare, Tipperary, Kerry and Waterford.
Around 25,000 calls are handled each year in the Munster centre, serving a population of 1.2 million people. The control centre employs approximately 25 people.
Angry workers want their status changed by Limerick City and County Council – which runs the facility – from outdoor staff to emergency staff.
They want their pay increased in line with this.
Union sources say Limerick’s local authority has not engaged with staff on a number of other issues, and have ignored requests from the Workplace Relations Commission.
Limerick-based Sinn Fein senator Paul Gavan said it would be “an absolute crisis” if the action goes ahead and urged the local authority to open talks with the union.
While firefighting personnel are not part of this action, the impact will be felt, as the call-centre dispatchers are the only ones with the know-how to direct the emergency service.
A union source said:
This is a last resort. Nobody wants to have to be doing this.
It’s all down to the council’s personal agenda. We are emergency services when it suits them. But if the firefighters next door get something, we don’t get it. We’re not classed as emergency service workers, but we do provide an emergency service. We’re providing a service, and very good at our jobs, but they do not want to engage and help make things better
Gavan said: “It’s an extremely serious situation. The council must do everything to avoid a strike. We have seen far too much of a high-handed approach from the council towards its employees. Ultimately, this is about respect and dignity. It’s totally unacceptable for the council to ignore the industrial relations machinery of the state and refuse to engage on key issues.”
He said he finds it hard to believe the other councils who feed into the centre have not stepped in to help resolve the standoff.
“If the workers have to resort to strike action, they have the full support of both myself and my party members in Sinn Féin. But it should not come to this,” he added.
One of only three control centres dispatching fire services in the state, the communications centre is responsible for 65 retained and four full-time fire stations in Munster.
Limerick City and County Council declined to comment. Siptu also did not wish to comment.
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They not an emergency service. They are a call centre.
@Keith: are the call takers trained to give advanced 1st aid advice over the phone whilst the emergency vehicle is enroute? If so, they may have some grounds to be classed as emergency workers
@Vocal Outrage: no they are not trained. You ring them up and ask for the service you need.
@Keith: yes they are an emergency services when a person rings this center looking for the fire service, this center alerts the closest fire brigade and with in that process the fire brigade and the emergency communications center are in regular contact on the radio from beginning of incident to its conclusion, and this is for the proper functioning of all call outs and monitoring of calls, if I fire brigade needs extra resources to deal with an incident this is the communication channel that they also have to rely on
Well there goes the rest of the remaining fiscal space in the Budget
Thanks siptu.
@Theunpopularpopulist: where does it say they are looking for money?
@Theunpopularpopulist: No, that went to the Spin Department of the existing Spin Department.
Taoiseach to sepnd €160,000 assessing Government’s public image
@Casper: Casper the Blind Ghost. Read it again.
*112…
@James Pelow: Probably the most important comment in this thread.
This is a straight forward request I totally agree with the staff in the center and support them in their fight to be recognized as an emergency services call center as they actually are and that’s a fact and it needs to be recognized, the truth is any one that’s involved in emergency situations are emergency personnel and that applies to the staff that pick up that phone to take the emergency call, well done and stand your ground.
25 staff to handle 25000 phone calls a year, 365 days, 24 hrs, nice job.
@Sam Cairns:.. Average of 3 calls a day per employee. Seems a tad over manned.
@Mike Walshe: Seriously, can anyone do math. 250000 calls a yr is an avg of 68 calls a day. I doubt that the 25 staff work all at once. It has to be shift rotation and probably 3 or 4 on each shift covering 365 days a yr incl weekends, bank hols, and Christmas.
If you’re earning the salary that you knew fully of upon applying for the job, then sit your arse down and answer the phone!
“dispatches fire services for six counties in the province” – em – there are only 6 counties in Munster
@eastsmer: from what I’ve read this centre handles and dispatches call for 69 firestations in the Munster region. Not just one for each county. Take Cork for example. You wouldnt send a Cork city firebrigade to a fire in skibbereen !!!!
That’s a very specific number of operators who are threatening strike action. Pity they couldn’t convince one more to join them and they’d have the round thousand…
“Gavan said….. Ultimately, this is about respect and dignity.”
Of course it is. Now how much will it cost to buy you respect & dignity?
There needs to be certain jobs where striking is illegal and punished i.e. No Blue Flu. These people need to have a proper mechanism for their issues to be heard and resolved which would no doubt require independent arbitration.
This is an emergency!
Sort it out!
Experienced this service this morning from main castlemaine/Tralee road
Absolutely terrible, no interest in victims and ” get off the line” attitude.
No issue with the actual emergency services they were brilliant but the “call centre OMG terrible attitude
have your say