Hospital workers are demanding around €750 a year to use handheld devices like mobile phones and tablets in the workplace.

Electricians, plumbers and carpenters at hospitals and health centres around the country are to be balloted on industrial action on the issue.

It comes after six workers at Dublin’s Coombe Hospital were suspended for refusing to cooperate with the rollout of the devices.

Trade union Connect is now preparing to ballot about 600 craft workers in the health sector over the issue.

Handhelds

On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, Connect General Secretary Paddy Kavanagh said the workers are simply demanding a payment that already exists for other public sector local authority workers.

“A few hospitals have raised this issue that they want to introduce these handhelds - and we have no issue with the use of handhelds - but what we did say to them was we would be looking for a similar payment to what's in place already in the public sector,” he said.

He said the issue was previously brought to the Labour Court, which found that it must be dealt with as a national issue.

The claim was then brought before the National Joint Industrial Council for the Health Sector and Connect has said it will be bound by whatever the council agrees.

Mr Kavanagh said the Coombe has “decided to basically go rogue and try to force the issue contrary to agreed procedures”.

The Coombe Woman and Infants University Hospital in Dublin in 2014. Image: Mark Stedman/RollingNews

Connect insists that it is happy to attend to talks on the issue but only if the six members at the Coombe are reinstated to their roles.

Asked whether Connect members are basically looking for money to use a phone instead of pen and paper, Mr Kavanagh said: “Our members are looking for a payment that already exists in the public sector.”

“It's not just mobile phones,” he said. “It's PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), laptops and tablets.

“There's various methods of how these are used and it's already agreed in the local authority sector in the public sector.

“There are agreed and robust procedures in the public sector where you take your issues, you negotiate them and you come out with whatever comes out at the end.”

Profits

He claimed that some private sector workers have also negotiated payments for using handheld digital devices in the workplace – noting that workers “want a small portion” of the profits that can be gained through their use.

“It's quite common because there are huge efficiencies to be gained by the use of these and all the workers always say is, we just want a small portion of that,” he said.

He said the current payment public sector workers can expect for using the devices is around €750 – meaning it would have cost the Coombe around €4,500 to simply agree the claim.

“Like I said, it's an allowance that's there already and it is one that was negotiated through the agreed procedures and signed off and agreed at the WRC,” he said.

“All the people in health are saying is we want the same as what's in the local authorities as they're entitled to do; however, what we have here is a rogue employer who locked people out – that is unheard of in the history of the public sector.”

Connect has said that, in the event of industrial action being taken, emergency cover will be provided at hospitals and health facilities.

The union says any action involving electricians and plumbers will inevitably lead to disruption.