Health sector staff who are members of the trade union Impact have signalled they will be prepared to take industrial action to protect pay levels, jobs numbers, and public services.
The union's health and welfare division conference in Castlebar, Co Mayo, passed an emergency motion this morning supporting action up to and including full-scale strikes to defend members who are victimised for refusing to cooperate with cutbacks.
Delegates at the conference also expressed strong concerns over the pension levy for public sector staff and cuts in mileage and subsistence payments.
Impact national secretary Kevin Callinan said that attempts by the HSE to "browbeat staff to accept unworkable and unacceptable arrangements that would cut jobs services and incomes represented a new low in the history of the organisation.
"Even while the national partnership talks continue, in a desperate effort to craft an agreed approach to the country's problems, these merchants were determined to thrash ahead with their own bankrupt agenda."
Mr Callinan said the union was not opposed to change but that it would resist its imposition every time.
Elsewhere, delegates at the annual conference of the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) are today debating a motion that would lead to a vote on industrial action.
The organisation's members, meeting in Killarney, Co Kerry, will be asked today to give the go-ahead to their union leaders to conduct local, regional and national ballots for all-out industrial action at hospitals across the State if the HSE acts unilaterally to cut their pay and allowances, or cut jobs.
The emergency motion, if carried, would also give the union’s leaders the go-ahead to take legal action if necessary to maintain existing rates of basic pay, premium pay and on-call rates for all INO members, as well as to maintain safe standards of care.