Mass union gathering to fight cuts

HUNDREDS of disaffected public sector workers will converge on Galway tomorrow for an update on the ongoing industrial action in protest at the budget pay cuts in the sector.

Unions representing 175,000 of the country’s 300,000 public servants have arranged a mass meeting of members in the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology.

The event will be addressed by four senior trade union leaders, SIPTU and Irish Congress of Trade Unions president Jack O’Connor, newly chosen general secretary designate ofIMPACT Shay Cody, Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation general secretary Liam Doran and Irish National Teachers Organisation general secretary designate Sheila Nunan.

They will inform the gathering of the progress of the work-to-rules and limited ongoing industrial action.

This is the first mass public service meeting held outside Dublin since Finance Minister Brian Lenihan announced in the budget that he was imposing an average 7% pay cut on staff.

Unions say the current industrial action aims to reverse the pay cuts which they say, when coupled with the pension levy, have reduced public servants’ gross incomes by up to 14% in the last year.

The unions have said that within the next three weeks they intend to ramp up the industrial action so that it will have greater impact on the public.

That is likely to mean some form of work stoppages.