IMPACT first to confirm 24-hour strike plans

IMPACT trade union has become the first to confirm it wants a 24-hour strike by the country’s 310,000 public servants at the end of November in protest at Government plans to introduce an average of 6.5% pay cuts in the sector in the next budget.

The country’s largest solely public service union said next Wednesday it will propose to the organisations representing teachers, nurses and others who provide essential public services, that they join with its 55,000 members in the national strike on November 24.

Meanwhile, the newly formed 24/7 Frontline Alliance, which comprises 100,000 emergency service personnel including gardaí, nurses and prison officers, yesterday said it was starting balloting members for strike action. The ballots will exclude gardaí who are banned by law from engaging in industrial action. The alliance is not only fighting against cuts to core pay but also to shift premia and overtime, which make up 20% of its members’ salary.

“This is the start of preparations for ‘stage three’ of our campaign to protect the entitlements of our members,” said Des Kavanagh of the Psychiatric Nurses Organisation.

“We would say to Government we don’t want to get to stage three because if we do the ballots we are currently preparing for and engaging in will have resulted in industrial action.”

‘Stage one’ of the alliance’s campaign was a series of meetings with more than 5,000 members around the country over the last month. Yesterday the alliance outlined ‘stage two’.

That will involve not only members taking part in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions afternoon of protest on November 6, but also a day of protest by the alliance’s own members on November 11.

“On that day we will hold a march, in uniform where possible, to the Dáil,” said Liam Doran of the Irish Nurses Organisation. “It is hoped 1,000 people will attend. The march will be lead by vintage emergency service vehicles to demonstrate that is what the Government and Colm McCarthy (author of Bord Snip Nua) want to do to public services, take them back 20 or 30 years.

Alliance members also plan to canvas TDs at their clinics and carry out leaflet drops. On the possibility of strike action on November 24, the alliance members said they would have to await the outcome of the ballots. Michael O’Boyce of the Garda Representative Association said while his members and those of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors were precluded from striking by law, they would be looking at some form of “innovative” action to protect their entitlements.

“One of the difficulties we have is that if we have ideas in mind, we can’t make them public because as the Government has shown with PDForra, it will immediately move to outlaw that action,” he said. “Rest assured we will be innovative in whatever action or inaction we decide to take. We don’t want to put members of the public in danger. We may inconvenience them but it will be far less inconvenient than if Colm McCarthy’s report was initiated.”