HOW can a union membership with a good pay offer on the table "hand out abuse and personal insults to its officers and executive?", a leader of the Civil and Public Service Union asked at its annual conference in Dublin at the weekend.
This reaction, from a bemused Mr John O'Dowd, general secretary of the union, was understandable. For two hours he had been listening to almost constant criticism from his members, who were being offered pay rises ranging from 3.4 per cent to 24 per cent over three years under the restructuring clause of the Programme for Competitiveness and Work. This is on top of 4 per cent due under the public service pay provisions of the PCW, and, of course, any new increases negotiated under a successor agreement.
The tone for the conference had already been set, however, by militant union members who asked why their 10 week work to rule across the Civil Service had been called off four days earlier. "We had the Government running scared", dissident executive member Mr Simon Rooney said.
Ms Clare McNamara, a delegate from Social Welfare, shrugged off the 1,500 promotions for clerical assistants in the restructuring package, saying: "We would have gotten them anyway.
The outgoing executive was accused of "disgraceful service to members, "bludgeoning through" its own policies, "bureaucracy" and cultivating a climate of fear". Delegates rejected most of the recommendations of the union's standing orders committee and the annual report.
The general secretary could do nothing right. When he left the conference hall briefly he was accused of showing contempt for the delegates. And when it was explained that he had done so only to be interviewed for RTE's News at One, there were cries of "Let them wait." He was then criticised for being more interested in talking to the media than to his own members.
The mood was very ugly at times, with overtones of a Stalinist show trial. Only here the union leadership was in the dock and the dissidents were the accusers.
It would be easy to write it all off as part of the ritual tongue lashing the CPSU leadership must endure at every annual conference. Unfortunately, the same mood of anger, disappointment and frustration is becoming increasingly obvious across the public service.
It was expressed, albeit with better manners, at the IMPACT conference in Ennis a week flier and by delegates to the Irish Nurses' Organisation conference in Limerick earlier this month. All of them have been alienated by the time it has taken to negotiate restructuring deals, the relatively modest pay rises on offer to most members and the radical changes in working conditions sought in return.
Unlike the nurses, the CPSU members are likely to accept their deal, but the bitterness will remain. One of the main critics of the outgoing leadership's performance, Ms Angela Cassidy, topped the poll to become the new CPSU president.
Mr O'Dowd's conduct of the recent Civil Service dispute was a textbook exercise in how to apply industrial muscle to secure a much better deal for his members. That lesson will not be lost on other public service unions.
If the final terms still leave some CPSU members boiling, how must workers in the private sector, who have had to accept much tighter limits on pay, feel?