In Ireland, that's a question with no simple answer. The very suggestion that a doctor or even the hospital porter be allowed to change a light bulb has resulted in a dispute that has seen electricians suspended from four different hospitals.
The Labour Court decreed that anyone could change a light bulb. An electrician, and member of the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union, was not required to remove a spent bulb and screw in a new one. Should a doctor be passing by and notice that the light was out, he was within his right to replace it so that all might see more clearly, thereby avoiding accidents and injury. The electricians' union did not see things that clearly at all.
It's an electrician's job to change a bulb, the union members claim, and because they wouldn't adhere to the labour court's decision, the electricians have been suspended without pay at Mallow Hospital, Kerry General, Cork University Hospital, and St. Finbarr's. To show the Health Service people that they won't take the suspension lying down, TEEU electricians won't come running if the power goes out over night when they're sleeping. Unless someone's life is at peril. They're not entirely heartless, these masters of the alternating current.
In answer to the original question, it is now apparent that only one doctor is needed, to place a call to a union electrician, to come over with his union-mandated assistants and be paid union scale for a job that most people manage at home, on their own, with no difficulty.
The real question is, why would the electricians think anyone would actually believe that only a TEEU member was capable of safely changing a light bulb? Is it any wonder that home owners aren't so concernced about hiring union electricians to do a bit of re-wiring? After all, if the union insists that only a union electrician can change a bulb, and anyone can do it, what else might the TEEU members be saying that's a cod?
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