The Government faces the strongest challenge yet to public sector pay policy following the rejection of a £100 million Labour Court award by the main nursing unions. They are threatening all-out strike in pursuit of parity with teachers and other health service professionals.
There are worrying indications that the pay restraint that has underpinned social partnership - and boosted prosperity - since 1997 is breaking down. This will make negotiations on a successor to Partnership 2000 ahead of ICTU's special delegate conference in November extremely difficult.
Groups showing serious signs of unrest include the Garda Representative Association, which may reject a 4 per cent increase it is currently voting on, and DART drivers who threaten to strike from Monday in pursuit of lump sum payments to allow trainee drivers to be recruited.
Paramedics and social workers are to ballot on pay proposals later this month, and the outcome could well be influenced by the outcome of the nurses' ballot, which begins on Monday.
The leaders of the State's 40,000 teachers have already put the Government on notice that they will seek further increases should public service pay guidelines be breached to settle the nurses' dispute.
The most immediate threat is posed by CIE workers. The DART strike will start on Monday if the company attempts to begin training new drivers. Unions representing existing drivers want members to receive at least £8,000 each, tax free, to facilitate change. Some drivers indicated yesterday they are still holding out for over £22,000 each.
Dublin Bus drivers are to begin industrial action from September 16th in pursuit of a 20 per cent pay claim that is in clear breach of the national pay agreement, Partnership 2000. If the Government concedes any of these claims, it could start an avalanche of pay demands.
The decision of the main nursing unions to call on the State's 27,500 nurses to reject the Labour Court award did not come as a surprise. Within 24 hours of its release on Tuesday, there were signs that groups as diverse as staff nurses, public health nurses, nurse tutors and directors of nursing were dissatisfied.
Yesterday, the chairman of the Nursing Alliance, Mr Liam Doran, said his union, the Irish Nurses' Organisation, SIPTU and the Psychiatric Nurses' Association would recommend rejection of the award.
IMPACT, which represents mainly public health nurses, is making no recommendation. However, its members are expected to reject the recommendation as well.
SIPTU's national nursing officer, Mr Oliver McDonagh, said his union would fully support members if they opted for industrial action.
The chief executive of the Health Service Employers' Agency, Mr Gerard Barry, said he was "very disappointed, bearing in mind that the unions said all along that what they wanted was adjudication". He felt the court's "very comprehensive" recommendation "should at least have received a fair hearing from the unions' membership".
A spokesman for the Minister for Health and Children, Mr Cowen, said it was a good deal. The Government had accepted the cost implications and the whole point of arbitration was to find a fair compromise.