TRADE UNION leaders are planning a national day of demonstration against the new pension levy for public service staff and what they describe as the Government’s failure to negotiate an agreed social solidarity pact for economic recovery.
The proposal for the day of action – which would be similar to the large-scale protests during the Irish Ferries dispute in 2005 – was put forward by the public services committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) yesterday evening and will be considered by the full executive of the organisation today.
The day of demonstration would not only be against the levy but would also be aimed at highlighting the concerns of private sector workers on issues such as unemployment, assistance for people with mortgage difficulties and problems facing pension funds.
Chairman of the public services committee Peter McLoone said that it would be asking the Ictu executive to organise the day of demonstration as soon as possible and would also be talking to other union leaders “about further action that may follow”.
The overall emerging union strategy would now appear to be three-pronged: a lobbying campaign of TDs this weekend, a day of demonstration and possibly further action later on.
Mr McLoone said that if the executive decided that further action should follow, and particularly if this related to industrial action, individual unions would put in place the arrangements for ballots in accordance with their own rules.
“The depth of anger that we have experienced would indicate that there is huge support for a concerted campaign and I think that would include further action if deemed necessary,” he said.
Earlier yesterday, the head of Siptu, Jack O’Connor, warned that industrial action “on a very dramatic scale” could be needed to fight against what he described as an ongoing attack on workers in all sectors.
However, he said such dramatic industrial action would only come about in support of an overall plan to address issues affecting workers across the economy.
Stressing that the issues at stake were far broader than the pension levy, he said that the “assault” on workers currently under way was as much about driving down wages as an alternative to a currency devaluation as it was about correcting the public finances without the better-off contributing a cent.
Mr O’Connor said he hoped the meeting of the Ictu executive would result in a united trade union response to problems facing workers regardless of where they worked. He said that Siptu would be proposing a “relentless national campaign” to promote a fairer and better way of tackling the economic crisis from which nothing would be excluded.
Mr McLoone said that it would be up to the Ictu executive to determine the date and nature of the demonstrations – with some other sources mentioning Saturday week as a possible date. He said this could be separate to the one-day strike action proposed by lower-paid civil servants.
He said that if, as a result of the day of demonstration, the trade unions ended up back in talks with the Government “then so be it”.
However, he said there was “a recognition that it may well require more than one day of demonstration to get the Government to recognise the depth of feeling out there about the situation we find ourselves in”.
He said the objective was to get back to the negotiating table as it was only there that problems could be resolved. “What we need to do is to get back around the table and try to start where these discussions broke down and at that stage what we were trying to do was to develop, in the context of a framework agreed on January 20th, a whole range of measures of which the €2 billion adjustment in public spending was just one.”