Public service unions to hold mass gathering

PUBLIC service staff are to hold a mass meeting later this month to discuss their ongoing industrial action in protest at the pay cuts announced in the last budget.

The meeting at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology in Galway on February 23, will be the first major gathering since almost 300,000 public servants began their action in a number of workplaces last month.

It will be addressed by a number of senior figures in the trade union movement, including the head of the Irish Nursing and Midwives Organisation, Liam Doran, Shay Cody of IMPACT, and SIPTU and current Irish Congress of Trade Unions president Jack O’Connor.

“The industrial action aims to reverse the pay cuts introduced in the last budget which, together with the pension levy, have reduced public servants’ gross incomes by up to 14% in the last year,” a spokesman said.

“The unions reject the Government’s view that there is ‘no alternative’ to the pay cuts and say they put forward an alternative approach last year, which would have delivered the payroll savings required by the Government in 2010, while ensuring that vital services were protected and enhanced as expenditure and staff numbers continued to fall in future years.”

Union leaders have said that such a transformation of public services remains both possible and necessary, and that their proposals could be back on the table if the Government were prepared to negotiate on the basis that the pay cuts can be reversed if equivalent, or larger savings, are made through public service transformation.

Meanwhile, civil service unions continued to escalate their campaign of industrial action by closing a further eight Government departments for a number of hours yesterday morning.

The Houses of the Oireachtas, the Central Statistics Office, the Revenue Commissioners, the Chief State Solicitors Office and the departments of Defence, Health, Agriculture and Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, were all shut to the public until 11am. In the afternoon workers in each refused to answer telephones.

Further action will take place today. Tom Geraghty, of the Public Service Executive Union, said unions would meet later this week to decide what action will occur next week.