HEALTH, LOCAL authority and education staff who are members of the trade union Impact have warned that they will take industrial action if necessary to protect jobs, pay levels and public services.
At the union’s biennial conferences for these sectors in Castlebar yesterday, members also passed motions strongly criticising the new pension levy for staff in the public sector.
The health sector conference also backed an emergency motion for industrial action up to full- scale strikes if members were victimised for refusing to co-operate with cuts imposed by Health Service Executive management.
At the health sector conference Michelle Geraghty of the North Tipperary branch said that already staff had had indirect wage cuts forced upon them.
“We reject out of hand these cuts and any other sneaky cuts to our pay packets. We must as activists motivate our members to stand up to this Government and together, in a unified and committed voice, say no more,” she said.
Edwina Jones of the Dublin Hospitals branch said that public sector staff paid well over the odds for their pensions. She said most staff started off paying 6.5 per cent towards pensions while the second benchmarking process took up to 12 per cent from salaries to take account of the current pension arrangements.
“I am no expert on pensions but those who are have told me that our pension scheme is worth roughly 30 per cent of salary and conventionally the employer pays two-thirds and the employee pays one-third. That means that we should be paying no more than 10 per cent for our pension. Ignoring the pension levy, we have people paying, between benchmarking and the 6.5 per cent (contribution), anything up to 18.5 per cent for this pension scheme.
“And now there is talk of taxing the lump sum. We have to put a stop to all of this.”
At the local government conference, Denis Kenny of the North Tipperary branch said: “We cannot tolerate wage cuts imposed, either directly or indirectly, on public sector workers. We did not cause the economic crisis and we will fight any attempt to force us to carry the economic burden.”
Michael Barry, chairman of the Cork Impact branch, called for a campaign against any wage cuts or job cuts in the public sector. He called for a national campaign, up to and including industrial action, bringing together workers from both the public and private sectors to defend jobs, wages and public services.
Frances Nolan, chairwoman of the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown branch, said the pension levy should be stopped immediately.