Staff at Co Donegal’s biggest hospital have taken action after management introduced a new system which includes putting their full names on identification badges.
The name badges, which include the first and surname of employees at Letterkenny University Hospital, were introduced recently.
But some staff have complained that the move has led to them being contacted online and being approached outside of their work hours in public.
Members of the SIPTU union, which includes some nurses as well as domestic and portering staff at the hospital, have now contacted their union.
The union has now written to the HR Manager at the hospital, Ms Aisling McDonald, saying they are not “not agreeable to the introduction of these badges in the current format.”
They say they have concerns around personal privacy entitlements as well as security and GDPR.
SIPTU members at the hospital held a meeting to discuss the name badges.
Union spokesperson Ciaran Sheridan also claimed that some departments in the hospital were threatening “all kinds of sanctions if they (the staff) do not wear them.”
In a letter to the hospital HR Department, Mr Sheridan, an Assistant Industrial Organiser with SIPTU, warned that this could lead to a future dispute with staff.
He wrote “This is not helpful and unnecessarily adversarial in nature. Any further threat of this nature will lead to a dispute arising with immediate effect.”
He added that their members are not against the principle of name badges if it improves the experience of those they care for.
But he suggested “It needs to be along the lines of the initiative introduced years ago across the HSE where the badge read “Hello my name is Ciaran” but there was no surname used.
“We are available to meet and discuss this further. In the interim, our members will not be cooperating with the further introduction of these name badges.”
We have contacted the HSE for a response on the issue.
