TRADE UNIONS:THE IRISH Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) has warned that there is a real risk of the proposed new national pay deal being rejected by union members in ballots currently taking place if they use their vote as a referendum on the Budget.
Ictu general secretary David Begg said unions were strongly opposed to the Government's plans to introduce a 1 per cent levy on all income, including that of low-paid workers. He described the measure as "politically and morally wrong".
Mr Begg said Ictu was seeking an urgent meeting with Taoiseach Brian Cowen and Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan to press for changes to the levy.
He did not believe the Government would reverse its plans to introduce the levy, but said unions would seek to have an income threshold introduced below which it would not be applied.
He suggested this could be a figure of €11 per hour or up to €23,000 per year. He said that Government and employers had accepted this figure as a definition of low pay in the recent pay talks.
Siptu, the country's largest union, yesterday postponed its planned ballot on the proposed pay deal to allow for the meeting with the Government on the Budget measures to take place.
Siptu president Jack O'Connor said a meeting of the union's national executive to consider the pay deal, which was adjourned yesterday, would reconvene next Wednesday, "when it is hoped that all the issues will be clarified and it can decide whether to make a recommendation to the membership on the pay proposals in the agreement one way or the other".
He said his executive was concerned that the Budget could negate some of the benefits in the pay deal for union members.
Mr Begg said the income levy proposals and the increase in VAT rates set out in the Budget were regressive measures as they did not take account of the worker's ability to pay. "Fundamentally, that is a wrong approach to taxation which we cannot agree with under any circumstances," he said.
Before the Budget, he would have forecast that the pay deal would have been passed in a vote of union members. He said that he could not be certain now. "If people are voting by way of a referendum on the Budget, then I think we could be in trouble on it."
He said he would caution people against such as stance. "If the pay deal element of it is rejected and we have to go off and negotiate with employers around the country, can people be certain that we could do a better deal? I believe that the pay deal was, actually, satisfactory," Mr Begg said.
Brendan Ogle, of the Unite union, said social partnership had not delivered for workers relative to the wealth that had been created in the economy.