The 13,000-strong Civil and Public Service Union (CPSU) is expected to vote overwhelmingly to leave the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness following the increases awarded to senior civil servants and politicians in the Buckley report. The union will begin to ballot members shortly.
Whether the CPSU can withdraw from the PPF without withdrawing from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions is unclear. But its general secretary, Mr Blair Horan, said yesterday: "It is simply not credible for Government to ask lower-paid civil servants to wait until next year for the benchmarking report while they dole out massive pay hikes to the top ranks.
"The Government decision to implement pay rises of up to 25 per cent for top civil servants above the PPF is not justified in current circumstances.
"Lower-paid civil servants are likely to receive only 6 per cent of a real pay increase under the PPF and must wait until June 2002 for any further increases under benchmarking.
"The two-tier system of public service pay determination where top public servants get earlier and more favourable treatment while the rest of the public service joins a long queue for their case to be heard cannot be justified in any circumstances.
"Lower-paid groups and those on average incomes in the Civil Service are angry at the pay rises being awarded to top civil servants, while they struggle to meet rent and childcare costs and are largely excluded from the housing market.
"While the union has always been a supporter of social partnership, the evidence increasingly shows that the outcome has favoured the better-off in both gross and net pay increases." Mr Horan said: "A key rationale in the Buckley report for these large increases was the extent of change and the implementation of the Strategic Management Initiative in the Civil Service. "Lower-paid clerical civil servants are equally embracing change and co-operating enthusiastically with major new initiatives like the introduction of performance management and development systems.
"The CPSU executive committee decided at its January meeting to ballot members on the terms of the revised PPF agreement and to recommend to members that they reject the revised terms."