A KEY group in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) has urged the trade union movement to suspend talks with the Government on a new national recovery programme unless construction firms that refuse to apply the new national pay deal are excluded from public contracts.
In a letter to the general secretary of Ictu, David Begg, last Wednesday, the construction industry committee of Congress said it was "absolutely dismayed" that the Government intended to continue to award public contracts to members of the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) despite its rejection of the terms of the new agreement.
It said the CIF had suggested it may unilaterally withdraw from the registered employment agreement, which governs pay and conditions in the building sector, unless unions agreed to a a 10 per cent pay reduction for workers.
In his letter, the chairman of Ictu's construction industry committee, Noel Dowling, said it was commonly known that within hours of the agreement with the Taoiseach on the new pay deal senior CIF figures were actively campaigning for its rejection.
"You can imagine the outcry that would accompany a declaration by a trade union that it intended to campaign, to the point of fomenting widespread industrial unrest, against the terms of an agreement which it had only hours previously agreed with the Government and the other social partners to recommend," he added.
"That union would be subjected to savage attack, not least by the Government, and would certainly not expect to be rewarded from the public purse for its actions.
"Contrast that situation with the Government's response to the CIF's actions, where construction companies which made large fortunes over the last 10 or 12 boom years are now refusing to pay the terms of the transitional agreement to their workers and are to be rewarded for that decision through the awarding of lucrative public contracts," he said.
Mr Dowling called on the executive council of Ictu to suspend its involvement in the talks with the Government until Ictu received an assurance that public construction contracts would be awarded only to those builders certified as applying the agreement in full . A spokesman for Ictu did not comment yesterday.