THOUSANDS OF mid-ranking civil servants have introduced a work to rule as part of the growing industrial action in protest at pay cuts put in place by the Government for staff in the public service.
The Public Service Executive Union (PSEU) has cash reserves of up to €5 million to back its campaign. It has pledged to reimburse members for wages deducted in any action taken to support a suspended colleague.
Initially PSEU members will not cover vacant posts, will work only agreed attendance patterns and adhere strictly to health and safety regulations. At local level, they will carry out actions such as not answering phones, closing public offices at lunchtime and refusing to operate some computer systems.
The campaign may be stepped up to include a refusal to deal with some parliamentary questions or handle ministerial representations. Members may also boycott “fast-track” systems which allow politicians to make applications for services for constituents.
The PSEU now joins the CPSU, which represents lower-paid civil servants, Impact, the largest public sector union, and the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation in staging industrial action in protest at the pay cuts.
CPSU members refused to answer phones in government offices in Dublin yesterday morning and in the northeast in the afternoon.
A similar ban on answering phones will be put in place in some regions today.
The union’s strike committee is to consider an escalation of the action on Monday.
The trade union Unite said its members across the health, local authority and education sectors would take part in the public sector industrial action from today. It also said that in a number of areas, the mood of members had swung dramatically in favour of supporting the industrial action.
“In a series of re-ballots of groups who had rejected industrial action at the end of 2009, members at the Regional Fisheries Boards, Bord Iascaigh Mhara, University College Dublin and NUI Maynooth have all now voted in favour of joining the action. Notice of these decisions has or will be served in the next 24 hours.”
Unite said that members in other areas such as Enterprise Ireland and the NSAI would join the industrial action from tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the public services committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, which is co-ordinating the industrial action, met again yesterday to consider strategy in the dispute. It also considered the proposed intervention suggested at the weekend by chief executive of the Labour Relations Commission, Kieran Mulvey.
Informed sources said that while the unions had not been contacted by Mr Mulvey, the committee yesterday considered that it could meet the commission ahead of any intervention to brief it on the background to the dispute.