Militant craftworkers meeting in Mullingar at the weekend have lifted the threat of further disruption to hospitals and local authority services, pending the outcome of a ballot on the latest pay offer on June 12th.
However, the group also has called on the 4,500 craftworkers involved in the ballot to reject the proffered increase of £25.26p a week, plus three extra leave days and other concessions, as inadequate. It says nationwide industrial action will recommence from June 15th.
The meeting demanded that no further negotiations take place until craftworkers had an opportunity to elect a new negotiating team. There were calls for the resignation of the craft group chairman, Mr Paddy Coughlan of SIPTU, and the secretary, Mr Finbarr Maguire of the TEEU.
About 200 craftworkers, mainly shop stewards, are understood to have attended the Mullingar meeting on Saturday. This small but significant minority within the craft group has already shown its capacity for disruption to the health services and local authorities by a series of one-day "rolling strikes". The militants reiterated their demand for a £25.26p a week pay increase "without strings", backdated to July 1997.
To some extent the flying pickets already have achieved their objective of highlighting opposition to the current pay offer. It remains to be seen if the embattled union leadership can successfully sell what is widely regarded as an extremely good package.
The negotiators have secured increases worth between £24.84p and £25.06p a week for their members. The problem is that only half of this, £12 a week, is backdated to the target date of July 1st, 1997. The rest will be phased in between now and July 1st, 1999.
It also includes the 2 per cent local bargaining increase due from July 1st, 1999, under Partnership 2000, and some limited concessions on productivity. For instance, carpenters will carry out paint priming when repairing windows and doors, plumbers will have to replace timber furnishings removed to repair pipes, and bricklayers will carry out minor plastering work.
Such practices are commonplace among craftworkers in the "analogue" companies, with which the unofficial strikers are claiming immediate and unconditional pay parity. Productivity concessions are also an in-built requirement of the analogue formula, but productivity negotiation has been virtually non-existent for several years.
A big problem in the current situation appears to be communications. Not since the early 1980s has there been such a public and acrimonious row between trade union leaders and their rank and file. The picketers say their union negotiators are not listening to them. The union leaders are equally frustrated, telling the picketers to read the proposals before condemning them.
There are nine under-resourced craft unions trying to represent and liaise with 4,500 members scattered across the Republic. SIPTU, in contrast, has been much more effective in getting across the message to its members in the sector that this is a good offer. As SIPTU also represents 1,600 of the craftworkers concerned, smaller unions, such as the TEEU, which has 200 members, fear that SIPTU will "swamp" the vote.
But there may be other factors at work. Last year, in an analysis of trends, the Labour Relations Commission warned that the economic boom could breed industrial unrest. It said the principal beneficiaries of the current economic growth were largely outside the trade union movement.
At one end of the spectrum there were unemployed people, school-leavers, graduates, and returned emigrants getting jobs that previously had not existed. At the other end of the spectrum big business was making more money than ever before. In the middle were those already in the workforce who, by their pay restraint, had helped create the boom. The health service and local authority workers feel they are one such group.