[Thomas J Stamp]

to reply:

1. I dont mind at all, you get what you pay for. The vast majority of wage rises in both our health service and the NHS relates to un-neccessary middle managment. Example: Replace unwieldy and over managed health boards with equally unwieldy and overstaffed HSE's. Railway example: untill 1988 there was one board and sub-managers of CIE. Now there are four.

2. Siptu are waiting for another review, due in about nine months. Chances are they'll do the same then. Also, real politik here, Siptu are aware of a cascade of claims form other grades they represent and worry about that. The INO dont have to.

3. The point is that by being fored to work a 39 hour week that itself is detrimental and therefore it should be cut. Management know that, due to the adverse working conditions, it is very hard to recruit sufficent numbers to make up the shortfall, and they dont want to shell out the moolah needed to entice those numbers. If this claim would affect only say 500 people it would have been met months ago. The sheer numbers alone is what is making the HSE hesitiate. The fact is that this could have been planned for three years ago, by the Department of Health. Instead the policy of Hawkins house can be summerise in two mottos: 1, if they strike they'll look like heartless bastards 2, we can play hardball knowing 1.

4. The Department and the HSE are exploiting the vocational nature of the job.

5. Quite right too. Except the ethical reasoning here is quite severe whilst the usual justification for railway actions, usually unofficial, is down to individual workers and managers acting the bollocks and their mates goading them on.

The day that a rail action is really down to safety reasons, or, god forbid, passenger concerns they'll get my support, as opposed to whinging that somehow an 8 carraige DART is a totally different beast than a 6 carraige one and the like and the swift application of some cash will qwell all their anxieties.