THE TRADE union movement is not formally planning to oust the Government in response to last week’s Budget, Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) general secretary David Begg has said.
Speaking after a meeting of the Ictu executive council yesterday, Mr Begg said, despite strong comments from Irish Bank Officials’ Association (IBOA) president Larry Broderick, the Ictu had not adopted a policy to try to remove the Government from power.
Ahead of the meeting, Mr Broderick said the trade union movement needed to respond to cutbacks with “a strategic approach, focusing on local issues, non-co-operation and taking the Government out of power”.
He told RTÉ news that Ictu members in the public and private sectors were suffering as a result of the Budget and warned that the country faced a “very serious winter of discontent”.
Mr Begg later said that Mr Broderick’s comments were in line with the general feeling of the meeting, but that no such plan of action had been adopted.
The public services committee of Ictu is expected to announce details of a campaign of industrial action against the pay cuts towards the end of the week or at the start of next week.
The Ictu executive yesterday condemned the Budget as “a savage and brutal attack on working people and the most vulnerable – the single worst budget in the history of the State”.
It unanimously adopted a motion describing the Budget as a “profoundly ideological exercise” which attacked working people, the unemployed and families.
Mr Begg said he did not believe there was a prospect of reinstating social partnership following the Budget.
He said that it was neither “an exaggeration nor an over-reaction to say” it marked a watershed in how the trade union movement would deal with the Government.
He said the Government’s withdrawal from partnership talks earlier this month “drove a stake through the heart of social partnership as a concept”.
He said the Ictu would first engage with employers in the private sector regarding their commitment to the 6 per cent pay deal negotiated in September of last year.
Trade unions in the Civil Service are considering introducing a work to rule or a boycott of parliamentary questions in protest at the introduction of pay cuts.
In a memo to members sent on Monday, the general secretary of the Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants Dave Thomas said that trade unions within the Civil Service were currently considering the nature of industrial action they should take on foot of the imposition of further pay cuts.
“The areas under consideration include a work to rule or the refusal to do some work such as parliamentary questions or ministerial representations etc,” he said.
Unions representing staff in the various sectors of the public service have been considering proposals for forms of industrial action over recent days.
However, Mr Thomas’s memo is the first public indication of the measures that could be adopted.