Strike threats - Get a grip Mr O’Connor

SIPTU chief Jack O’Connor would do well to heed the warning from Labour leader Eamon Gilmore when he warned unions that strikes against the pension levy could backfire.

Speaking before Mr O’Connor threatened that industrial action “on a very dramatic scale” could be needed to fight against what he described as an ongoing attack on workers, Mr Gilmore said that “this... is not a time for industrial relations tactics which may have worked for you in the past but which now will only further alienate a wider public who are worried about the security of their own jobs and businesses”.

Ominously, Mr O’Connor warned yesterday that any industrial action would involve much more than “walks around town”.

Lest he or any of his colleagues are in doubt this argument is not part of a campaign to divide workers or force down wages across the economy. This is a plea for sanity and hopefully the recognition that tens of thousands of workers would be delighted to pay the pension levy if they had secure jobs with guaranteed pensions.

Many things need to be put right in Ireland 2009 but “dramatic” industrial action is not the way to do it, especially with the prospect of 400,000 people losing their jobs, especially in a country that borrows €55 million a day to pay its housekeeping bills.