SENIOR CIVIL servants have voted to join the planned national public sector strike scheduled for next Tuesday, November 24th.
In what is seen as a hardening of attitudes, members of the Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants (AHCPS), which represents principal officers and assistant principal officers as well as other grades such as prison governors and court registrars, yesterday voted by 60 per cent to 40 per cent to take part.
The move represents an effective reversal of a decision taken by the union last March when members voted by a similar margin not to participate in industrial action planned at that stage.
Principal officers in the Civil Service can earn between €84,000 and €111,000, while the salary scale for assistant principals ranges from €64,500 to €88,600.
However, the union said its members had already endured an effective pay cut of up to 17 per cent as a result of the introduction of income and pension levies. The senior civil servants will join thousands of teachers, nurses and other public servants who are set to undertake a one-day stoppage next Tuesday in protest at Government proposals to cut pay levels.
Members of the Unite union, which represents mainly craft workers in local authority health and education sectors, also voted by between 80 and 95 per cent for industrial action
Separately yesterday, unions confirmed they were looking at plans for a second national public service strike before the Budget – the mandate by senior civil servants is only for a one-day action.
The chairman of the public service committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Peter McLoone, said the Government was showing “no visible desire” to avoid confrontation. “This morning we recognised that the 24th (November) may come and go and there still may not be a resolution to the difficulties, so the committee has recognised that there may be a need to take further industrial action ahead of the Budget on December 9th.
“We have not as yet worked out the nature of that action or the detail of it, nevertheless it was recognised by everybody that that possibility may arise. Once we finish our preparations on Thursday for the 24th, we will then begin to engage on whether there is a need for a next phase, and in what form that is likely to take place.”
Mr McLoone said the unions had not yet received a document promised by the Government which would quantify and publicly recognise the contribution already made by public servants, and set out its vision for public service numbers and reforms over the next two to three years.
He said without this data “it would be impossible to judge if any negotiations aimed at avoiding strikes had any chance of success because the unions needed to know if there was a basis for dialogue on the redeployment and work practice changes necessary to maintain service levels with fewer staff but without pay cuts”.
The Government is expected to table the “vision” document over the coming days. However, some informed sources said the contents would not come as a surprise to the unions.
Sources close to the current process said the only reason the Government had engaged in the recent talks was that the unions had indicated there was a different way of securing the €1.3 billion sought in savings. However, while the unions had sought information on costing from the Government they had not put their own proposals on the table.
Dave Thomas, general secretary of the union for senior civil servants, said the ballot result “demonstrated members’ opposition to the Government’s narrow focus on cutting Civil Service pay to remedy the difficulties with the public finances”. “We have continually and openly worked with Government on creating a more modern, flexible, and high-quality public service, and are disappointed that this contribution is being ignored in preference to a blinkered focus on pay cuts.”