Lower paid civil servants are planning to stage a one-day national stoppage later this month in protest at the Government's proposed pension levy.
The stoppage will take place if union members vote in favour of the action and would disrupt all Government departments, the Revenue Commissioners, Social Welfare offices and Garda Stations around the country.
At a meeting this afternoon, the executive of the Civil Public and Services Union (CPSU) voted to carry out a ballot of its 13,000 members on industrial action up to and including full strike action as part of its campaign against the levy.
The CPSU is also to hold a demonstration outside Dáil Éireann on February 18th. The ballot result will be known on February 19th, and if it is carried the union said it would be holding a one-day stoppage on February 26th.
The union is also to establish a committee to examine various forms of industrial action which would disrupt the management of Government services while minimising the impact on members of the public.
CPSU deputy general secretary Eoin Ronayne said earlier the introduction of the levy and the deferral of increases due under the national pay deal represented a 12 per cent pay cut for members.
CPSU general secretary Blair Horan said public servants are being "scapegoated" for a crisis they didn't create. He said: "The Government still has not shown how those who made the most from the boom and have the most will share the burden.
“CPSU members on low to average incomes are very angry at the Government’s decision which they consider unfair and unacceptable,” Mr Horan said.
“The Government’s action unfairly targets lower paid civil servants and to date it has failed to give any indication about how the better off in society will share the burden.”
The executive council of the Irish Nurses' Organisation held a special meeting today to examine details of the levy and to assess the feedback from members and other public sector unions. Following the meeting, it said its 40,000 members would participate fully in whatever public sector wide protest campaign is agreed by the public service unions as a whole.
"The priority now, for both public service unions is that a collective campaign would be brought forward to highlight the inequity of the current proposal while also ensuring that the employer's agenda, of putting worker against worker, does not succeed," said INO general secretary Liam Doran.
"The INO has now agreed to be active participants in these campaigns and we will discuss various options and strategies, with our public and private sector union colleagues, in the coming days."
Impact has already announced a major campaign of lobbying of TDs next weekend. The union's general secretary, Peter McLoone, said he welcomed statements from some other unions that they would adopt similar strategies.
He said unions would want to harness public dismay at mounting job losses, as well as anger at the public service pension levy.
Mr McLoone also said unions would want to pressurise the Government into fair and equitable economic-recovery measures based on the framework document on economic recovery agreed by the Government and the social partners before the talks collapsed last week.
The Public Service Executive Union said earlier today it would be urging its members to join members of Impact in lobbying TDs.
General secretary designate Tom Geraghty said unions accepted the need for urgent action to get public finances back in order, but he said the attacking the earnings of low and middle earners while failing to tax high earners or curb "obscene salaries" paid to what he described as failed executives as "grotesque and unfair".
Union sources said there had been no contact yet with the Government on the application of the levy. Last week Taoiseach Brian Cowen indicated in the Dáil he would be willing to engage in talks with the unions on a possible "tweaking" of the levy.
Ictu's public services committee is to meet tomorrow, while the organisation's executive council is to meet on Wednesday to consider a joint trade union response to the levy, the failure to agree economic recovery measures through social partnership, and "the Government and Ibec's declaration that agreed pay increases will be withheld from all workers regardless of their employers' ability to pay".
Congress general secretary David Begg said: "We will not take any self-defeating actions, but we cannot walk away and see a major reduction in peoples' standard of living."
