Union warns of escalation in protest

THE union representing lower paid civil servants has warned that their industrial action is likely to escalate if no deal on public sector pay and reform is reached at intensive talks this weekend.

Speaking as the Civil and Public Services Union Conference got underway in Galway, general secretary Blair Horan said he thought members would take a clear decision that if the talks do not resolve the problems, there will be an escalation.

Mr Horan said that members would not shut down any public counters anywhere in the public sector tomorrow. He said the union had decided counter closures in the current circumstances would be “irresponsible”.

By early yesterday afternoon the queue outside the office was gone.

The CPSU welcomed the significant reduction in the queues “after proposals by the union, designed to tackle the chaos of recent days, were implemented by management”.

However passport office management said a backlog of 50,000 applications remained, while passport processing was occurring at a rate of 2,000 a day.

The calming of the dispute follows a tense week when union members, threatened with pay cuts if they continued industrial action, issued protective strike notice which would legally allow them to go on strike from next Tuesday if pay was docked.

Yesterday afternoon saw the civil service industrial action against controversial Government pay cuts result in the closure of the country’s 66 local social welfare offices.

A spokeswoman for the new Department of Social Protection said CPSU and Public Service Union members withdrew from counter duty after 1pm but continued to process claims already lodged. She added that as payments were received through local post offices or by post the action would not result in delays but had inconvenienced those seeking to submit social welfare applications or make enquires.

Meanwhile Fine Gael calls for the Government to seek court injunctions against striking passport office workers were declared legally unlikely by law lecturer Micheal Doherty of Dublin City University.

Fine Gael TD Billy Timmins stressed his party understood the situation low paid civil servants faced and reiterated a demand that pay cutbacks should only be implemented on those earning over €30,000 a year.

At the CPSU annual conference in Galway, union leaders said they could only accept a public sector pay deal if members’ pension levy and wage cutbacks were reversed.

This position is expected to be endorsed by delegates today and place pressure on union and Government talks at the Labour Relation Commission this weekend.

The militant tone of the CPSU members was expressed in an email read out on local East Coast radio station from a passport office worker responding to one customer whose family lost a holiday in Florida.

“I will personally ring that woman’s kids and apologise for them not going to Disneyland if she will ring my kids and tell them why we can’t afford to pay our bills.”