The national executive of SIPTU is today expected to recommend acceptance of the national pay deal negotiated last month.
Despite criticism of the deal from some branch representatives yesterday, leaders of the union indicated that in their view it was the best that could be achieved.
The deal offers most workers a 5.5 per cent pay increase, in three phases, over 18 months. People earning €9 an hour or less would receive an additional half per cent.
These follow a 7 per cent increase during the first 18 months of the three-year Sustaining Progress partnership agreement.
SIPTU president Mr Jack O'Connor told a consultative conference of the union yesterday that Sustaining Progress had delivered pay increases significantly ahead of inflation.
In real terms, the pay rises were the highest negotiated since the partnership process began in 1987, with the exception of the PESP in 1990, he said.
The union's executive could decide to recommend rejection of the terms at its meeting today, he added.
But if it did, it would have to be on the basis that there was a better alternative strategy available.
Mr O'Connor said employers would be unlikely to concede a better deal if unions rejected the agreement proposed.
The alternative of a return to "free-for-all" pay bargaining would deliver higher increases to some workers, but leave others worse off.
Free-for-all pay rounds, he said, "were never free, and they were never for all".
More than 200,000 SIPTU members will be invited to ballot on the deal over the next few weeks, after the national executive makes its view known.
The result will dictate SIPTU's stance at a special ICTU conference on September 1st, when unions vote on whether to ratify the deal.
SIPTU will have almost 20 per cent of the overall vote, so its position will have a large bearing on whether the agreement is adopted.
Some activists in the union plan to campaign for a "No" vote.
Ms Marnie Holbrook of its education branch told yesterday's conference that, at a time when "nobody is talking to the Government", unions were prepared to continue engaging with it.
