Rehab staff prepare to strike

UP to 900 staff at the social inclusion organisation Rehab are preparing to go on strike at what they claim is the unilateral imposition of pay cuts without consultation.

The workers, members of SIPTU, are willing to take the action because they say they are to be subjected to pay cuts in line with those imposed on the public service in the December budget. They point out the Government has already determined that staff in agencies such as Rehab are not public servants and so the budget cuts should not affect them.

According to SIPTU, even though that fact was confirmed by Tánaiste Mary Coughlan in the Dáil at the end of January, Rehab management told the union on February 9 it intended to implement the pay cut as applied to the public service with effect from January and also to implement 24 redundancies across the Rehab Group. It said failure to achieve such an outcome would result in 115 redundancies.