Impact conferenceIndustrial action to protect the careers of civil and public servants who choose not to participate in decentralisation was threatened yesterday by Impact.
The union, which represents 52,000 public sector workers, said it would not allow members who wanted to stay in Dublin to be forced into jobs that were not appropriate for them.
Mr Peter Nolan, national secretary, told delegates to its biennial conference in Tralee that the Government was attempting to push its decentralisation programme through without an independent examination of its efficiency or effectiveness.
The Government, he claimed, was blindly pursuing a policy of distancing public service customers from service providers. This would operate as a "millstone around the necks" of taxpayers and service users for years to come.
"There is no set of circumstances that can make sense of removing services from their client base," he said. "Yet the Government's ill-thought-out proposals require 100 probation officers working with the courts and clients in Dublin to move to Navan."
The Government also wanted development aid staff at the Department of Foreign Affairs, who worked with embassies and NGOs in Dublin, to move to Limerick.
"It wants 100 valuation staff to decamp to Youghal, nearly 150 miles away from the biggest cluster of commercial ratepayers." Health and Safety Authority staff, who dealt with a large number of construction site accidents in Dublin, were being asked to move to Kilkenny.
Engineers, architects, architectural assistants, conservation staff and specialists in the Office of Public Workers and the Department of the Environment were being dispersed to Wexford, Waterford, Cork, Kildare and Mayo, undermining the collective knowledge base of staff, he said. "The list goes on and on."
Mr Nolan said Impact's decision not to boycott the Central Applications Facility - the web-based system set up to allow public servants apply for locations to which they wish to transfer - should not be interpreted as support for that process.
"This union will not allow members who want to stay in Dublin to be forced into jobs that are not appropriate for them, and this might well become the most contentious element of decentralisation."
No option, including industrial action, would be excluded in the union's campaign to protect the career prospects of these members, he said, to applause from delegates.
The conference passed a motion saying Impact would continue to co-operate with decentralisation as long as it was implemented on a voluntary basis, and that the jobs, working conditions and career prospects of all State workers were protected.
Delegates rejected a motion calling on the union to publicly support anti-bin charge campaigns.
