Union proposes mortgage ‘strike’

A CAMPAIGN of civil disobedience culminating in a mortgage strike has been mooted by the country’s largest nursing union as a means of forcing banks to write down the mortgages of householders in negative equity.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) has submitted a motion proposing a campaign of community-wide resistance to negative equity to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU).

INMO deputy general secretary Dave Hughes said the idea was being floated because the “normal methods” of trade union protest, such as public protests, currently weren’t working and because people were afraid to take industrial action for fear of losing jobs.