A leading trade union leader has forecast that there will be extensive strike action by staff in the public service in protest at pay cuts introduced by the Government in the Budget.
Speaking before a meeting of the public services committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) this afternoon, Blair Horan of the CPSU, which represents lower-paid civil servants, said there was a strong determination among his members to fight the pay cuts.
He forecast that there would be a gradual build up industrial action over the next couple of weeks but that February would see the start of "a pretty extensive campaign of action".
"When we have lost 12 per cent in pay and the Government has decided that the bulk of the adjustment would fall on public servants, they are not going to take that lying down.
Low-level industrial is not going to persuade the Government to change course. It will take more extensive strike action. But that will happen in my view,” he said.
Mr Horan said that while members could never afford to take strike action, they could not a pay cut either.
Various public sector trade unions have begun serving formal notice of industrial action on the Government in protest at the pay cuts.
The CPSU warned the Department of Finance yesterday that its members in Government departments and in non-commercial State agencies would commence industrial action from next Tuesday. Impact told the Department of Finance earlier this week that industrial action, up to and including a series of strike actions, would begin on Monday, January 25th.
Arriving at the Ictu meeting this afternoon, Mike Jennings of the Irish Federation of University Teachers said the union would refuse to co-operate with the embargo on recruitment and promotion in place in the universities if it received a mandate from its members. This was overwhelming likely, he said.
"I think that is going to cause huge difficulties for staff, for students the universities. The Government just can't expect to run a full university system with a dramatically reduced staff".
"We are also contemplating a number of other initiatives, a withdrawal from partnership is pretty obvious, (but) there has been an endless supply of additional tasks assigned to academics over the last number of years as part of national agreements. National agreements have now been thrown out the window by the Government and we will be throwing out those tasks as well. We will be concentrating on our core functions which are teaching students and doing research,” he said.
Liam Doran of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation said members were going to get a very big shock got their pay cheques at the end of this month and that a great deal of anger was going to surface very rapidly.
"The anger is there it is a question of directing it and at the same time ensuring that all sectors of the public service deliver a meaningful blow. The Government is not out of the woods at all in terms of what they have done to public servants,” he said.
The move by trade union to begin serving formal notice of industrial action on the Government was criticised by Chambers Ireland, which chief executive Ian Talbot describing the decision as disappointing.
"The chamber network fully recognises the pain that is being felt across the wider economy, both public and private, as pay cuts and job losses and company closures are announced,” he said. “While many public servants have taken significant cuts in recent times, these measures are necessary given the collapse in tax revenues as a result of the recession. If Government had not taken the measures proposed it would have weakened the economy further and imposed even greater pain on the productive sector.
"Private sector workers are continuing to be flexible in order to keep their companies in operation - and to sustain their jobs. Public servants meanwhile have, until now, enjoyed job security which is an important asset in uncertain times,” he said. “Further industrial action will be of no benefit to our already challenged economy. Job retention, job creation and competitiveness, not absolute rates of pay, have to be our priority. The time has come for the trade unions to realise this.”