Trade unions plan stoppages and days of protest

PUBLIC and private sector trade unions are to organise widespread work stoppages and national days of protest throughout the coming weeks in a bid to stop government putting the weight of the economic recovery on the shoulders of ordinary workers.

Public sector unions will ask the executive council of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) this morning to organise a national day of protest in the next two weeks. Unions in the public and private sectors will also discuss forms of industrial action which would bolster their campaign.

Unions are angry at the Government’s attempts to recoup €2bn in exchequer savings by introducing a public service pension levy while failing to seek any contribution to the economic recovery by other sections of society and failing to address rising unemployment.

“I have no doubt that unemployment will feature far higher than any other issue in any plan put together by the ICTU executive council,” said IMPACT general secretary Peter McLoone.

His members, as well as the rest of the 350,000 workers in the public sector, fear swingeing job cuts, given the ongoing evaluation by An Bord Snip Nua, officially titled the Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure Programmes.

Unions are trying to maintain a united approach at a time when, they say, there are concerted attempts by employers and Government to play public and private sector workers against each other.

The national executive council of SIPTU, which represents workers in both sectors, met for three hours yesterday to discuss the current economic crisis.

Afterwards, SIPTU president Jack O’Connor said the Government was part of an employer agenda to drive down wages across the workforce. He said the pensions levy was only one of a number of issues against which unions must fight.

Mr O’Connor said this attack on workers “owes its origins to the announcement by the construction industry employers, the people who did best during the boom, that they intended to cut the wage of building workers by 10%. Now we have that developing across the economy”.

He said the Government’s approach was “about correcting the problem in the public finances while ensuring that the wealthy contribute nothing”.

On the likelihood of industrial action he said no form could be excluded.

“I have no doubt in my mind that this is going to entail industrial action on a very dramatic scale much more than the walk around town that some people are focused on. We will not be taking industrial action on a dramatic scale except in support of a plan that addresses the issues of working people across the economy. If that plan is endorsed we won’t be stopping.”