Workers should resort to general strike tactics if employers refuse to negotiate a new national agreement, according to one of SIPTU's senior officials.
Mr Noel Dowling says unions should opt for "progressive, incremental industrial action" leading to week-long stoppages if necessary to secure national pay increases.
Mr Dowling is a high-profile national industrial secretary of SIPTU, well known from his involvement in a series of major disputes in Aer Lingus, CIÉ and other State companies. He makes his proposal in an article for the specialist journal, Industrial Relations News. He argues that, rather than simply returning to free collective bargaining, where unions negotiate with employers at local level, if talks on a national agreement fail it would be more effective to apply industrial muscle across the board.
"Why should trade unions allow the employers dictate the agenda by walking away from the negotiating table at a time of their choosing?" he asks. "It seems illogical to me that when employers acting collectively at national level refuse to negotiate, the trade union response is to revert to our smallest, perhaps weakest, bargaining units.
"National bargaining is not the sole property of the bosses or trade union hierarchies - workers should be encouraged to take control of their own destiny.
"A national collective response to the employers, in the tradition of Connolly and Larkin, could be effectively deployed through progressive, incremental stages of action: two-hour, half-day, day- and week-long stoppages.
"Such a strategy would require a high degree of co-operation between unions. But isn't that the business of trade union leaders, fostering co-operation and solidarity between workers in the interest of workers?"
Cynical observers may see Mr Dowling's remarks as simply the opening round in his campaign to become general secretary of SIPTU when Mr John McDonnell retires next October.
However, the fact that Mr Dowling sees the strategy as a vote-puller means that employers would be foolish to dismiss his views.
It is also unlikely that Mr Dowling would have written such an article without the prior knowledge of SIPTU's general officers. He works closely with the vice-president, Mr Jack O'Connor, who is responsible for industrial relations strategy.
The director-general of the Irish Business and Employers' Confederation, Mr Turlough O'Sullivan, and its director of industrial relations, Mr Brendan McGinty, have been severely sceptical about the prospects of benefits to be derived from a new national agreement to succeed the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness.
However, the same issue of Industrial Relations News contains the results of a survey by the Institute of Personnel and Development of senior human resource directors and managers that shows a new agreement is the preferred option of more than two-thirds.
At the same time they have doubts about the ability of unions and partnership to continue delivering viable national agreements.