More than 2,000 senior civil servants have called on their union to reopen negotiations on the local bargaining clause of the Programme for Competitiveness and Work.
The general secretary of the Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants, Mr Sean O Riordain, told members at the weekend it was totally unacceptable that unions which respected guidelines on public service pay should be penalised while more militant groups were being rewarded.
He was speaking at the union's delegate conference in Dublin on Saturday.
While partnership agreements had been central to the success of the Irish economy since 1987, Mr O Riordain said it "cannot be taken for granted and, for the vast majority of working people, pay is the glue which holds social partnership together".
He said the partnership would not survive if the Government adopted the same approach to pay for the future as it did under the restructuring clause of the PCW.
"It is totally unacceptable that unions which respected the 5.5 per cent guidelines agreed between the Government and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions would find that they are penalised by the reference to other major groups in the public sector whose pay aspirations outside of the agreed guidelines have been accommodated by the Government.
"Partnership, if it is to work for the future, must at its core involve the equal and fair application of the same rules across the public sector. The alternative is for the Government to create a climate in which every public service union believes that industrial action is the only way to achieve fair treatment."
He said the Government and the Public Services Committee of Congress were talking about future arrangements for pay in the public sector, but it was difficult to see any new agreement unless there was a resolution by way of pay adjustment for those public sector unions which had settled within the 5.5 per cent agreed parameters.
"It is neither possible nor desirable to ignore pay relativities, and the Government should have learned from the PCW restructuring debacle that there are de facto pay links which are very deeply embedded in the system."
Mr O Riordain warned the Government that it could not defer tackling the housing crisis any longer.
"Workers will not accept that the prospect of purchasing their own homes is gone forever. The housing crisis is a monster which, if unchecked, will undermine and ultimately destroy any concepts of social justice or social partnership."
Mr O Riordain said members welcomed the Freedom of Information Act but regretted the exclusion of the "whistle-blower" provision in the draft of the original Bill.