A CONSULTATIVE conference of the trade union Unite has voted unanimously to recommend rejection of the proposed national pay deal in a forthcoming ballot of members.
Irish regional secretary of Unite Jimmy Kelly said the proposed agreement, negotiated by the social partners last month, failed to deliver on pay.
He said the proposal "stacked up to a pay cut".
Mr Kelly said workers could be left at a loss of 2.5 per cent overall as a result of the last pay agreement and the new proposed deal failing to match inflation.
He said the conference of about 150 workplace representatives from around the country had agreed to recommend a No vote in a forthcoming ballot of its 60,000 members.
He said: "We had a mixture of representatives [including those] who had been victims of the inability-to-pay clause up to now. In other words, not getting what people were entitled to under the Sustaining Progress or the Towards 2016 agreements and now coming in to this agreement whereby the same clause exists. So you have a section of people who feel that they are not going to get anything under the deal.
"You have the low paid, who are saying that this additional 0.5 per cent is just meaningless in terms of addressing their difficulties, and then you have the bulk of people at the meeting who were saying that this did not address the rate of inflation and did not keep workers abreast of the cost of living."
He said the proposed deal did not measure up in terms of pay.
"This draft agreement fails to deliver on pay, it virtually ignores the lowest paid, it totally ignores the right to union representation and it totally ignores the plight of the one million Irish workers who have no second-tier pensions," Mr Kelly said.
He said workers could "do at least as well if they engaged in free collective bargaining with their employer", although he acknowledged that the situation would be uneven in various workplaces across the State.
Mr Kelly said Unite had entered the national talks with the demand that pay had to be increased substantially ahead of inflation.
He said this had not been met in the proposed agreement.
"There is a view that this agreement is the best that could have been achieved," Mr Kelly added. "We need to send a message that this is not the case. Workers are being asked to bear an intolerable share of the pain that economic recession brings. In return employers' groups are to urge restraint with regard to executive pay.
"There are no parameters on which the highest paid should be judged, no penalties for the excess that has become so apparent," he said.
Referring to the economic crisis, he said workers could offer pay pauses, pay freezes and reductions in pay but it would not make any difference to the markets, adding that "the insanity that is happening in the marketplace will not be addressed by us being moderate on pay".