TRADE UNIONS are to launch a “sustained campaign of opposition” to pay cuts, job losses, reduced public services and what they maintain are aggressive tactics being pursued by some employers.
Speaking after a meeting of the executive of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) yesterday, president of Siptu Jack O’Connor said nothing could be ruled out as part of the new campaign, including strike action.
The precise nature of the drive will be determined at the further Ictu executive meeting at the end of the month.
Mr O’Connor said workers “were being battered into the ground” in a number of current disputes while the Government was focused on Nama, bondholders and shareholders.
He said “a campaign of resistance equal to the aggression being waged against workers” would be needed.
Mr O’Connor said in a number of current disputes employers were refusing to go to the Labour Court and were pursuing aggressive tactics to bring about pay cuts and job losses.
Ictu general secretary David Begg said lengthy talks with the Government over recent months to deal with the unemployment crisis had not produced anything.
He said that despite all the efforts of the trade union movement nothing had happened. He said that given the deteriorating climate in industrial relations and “the inability to forge any kind of approach to handling the huge burden of economic adjustment that is falling disproportionately on workers, we must look to more direct ways of conveying the strength of feeling of our members”, he said.
In a statement issued after the meeting, Mr Begg said: “Not alone has there been no action to keep people in work, but those defending their jobs have been subjected to extraordinary mistreatment . . . the employer is more in tune with practices from the early 1900s, than with a modern society.
“Our talks with Government have not produced anything. Congress therefore sees no alternative but to mobilise its membership – some 650,000 people and their families, in this jurisdiction – in a campaign of sustained opposition and in order to convince Government that fairness and social justice must be central to any proposed solution to the crisis.”
At its meeting Ictu also agreed to maintain its support for the Lisbon Treaty. However, constituent unions are free to take their own stances on the issue.
At the Ictu executive meeting yesterday one union, the CPSU, had proposed that plans for an effective one-day national strike, be reactivated.
Last spring, Ictu suspended a planned national day of strikes which had been organised to try to force the Government to engage with it on an agreed economic recovery programme. The planned industrial action was put on hold after Taoiseach Brian Cowen invited the social partners to further talks.
However, the planned day of strikes which had the potential to cause serious disruption in the transport, health and education sectors, had run into some trouble at the time of the suspension.
Members of Impact, the country’s largest public sector union, had not backed the action by a sufficient majority under its rules to allow it to take part. Members of the Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants also voted not to participate.
Some union leaders have said they were coming under pressure from members following the publication of the McCarthy report on proposed expenditure cuts and remarks by Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan about possible reductions in the minimum wage.
Last week, comments made in a speech by Mr Cowen, in which he appeared to indicate that public sector pay cuts could be on the Government’s agenda, also caused some unease.