AER LINGUS could have a major industrial dispute this week. Nurses are balloting for a national strike in July. And the long running dispute at Dunnes Stores, which accounted for the bulk of days lost in strike action last year, is set to escalate.

While many people ponder the outcome of the Northern Ireland elections this weekend and the implications for the peace process, there is mounting concern among employers and trade unions over (the future prospects for industrial peace in the Republic. There has been a rash of disputes in recent months involving nurses, teachers, low paid civil servants and industrial workers in the private sector.

So far, few have escalated to full scale industrial action. Provisional figures for the first quarter of 1996 show that only 1,638 production days were lost through strikes, compared with 5,334 for the same period last year. Nevertheless, a new malaise seems to be affecting the industrial relations climate.

The social partners stumbled into national agreements almost by accident. The Government wanted the Programme for National Recovery to put public finances in order, employers wanted it to halt spiralling pay claims, and unions wanted it because they realised a free for all left their weakest members behind while inflation and tax increases wiped out the benefits of any increases won.

Then along came the globalisation of the economy, and the opening of eastern Europe, with its vast reservoir of technology and skilled but low paid workers. As one union leader put it recently, old technology only wiped out blue collar jobs. (With new technology "no one can escape".

National agreements gave unions a say, but only a say, in how all these factors impacted on Irish life and the economy. At many plants workers have had to concede longer hours and more productivity without significant pay increases. Sometimes pay has been frozen or cut. Even this was not enough to save plants such as Packard.

It is easy, therefore, to find causes for grievance, some of which are almost intangible. Take this week's two day stoppage at Cadbury, for instance. Nearly 1,000 people walked off the job in an unofficial dispute. It was all about who should operate a chocolate coating machine which was being test run after an overhaul. This was the type of strike that everyone thought had been buried by nine years of national agreements.

TRYING to explain why he had joined the walkout, an elderly production worker nearing retirement said:

"The unions and management are like this." He drew his hands together into a knot. "They have everything sewn up, so that you can't object to anything. You can't "even complain or you're told you're in breach of an agreement. We had to make our point, and now we've made it."

Even so, it was only with some difficulty that the unions involved, SIPTU and the ATGWU, persuaded members to return to work.

SIPTU will have an even tougher task averting a major strike in Aer Lingus this week. As Ireland's largest union, and one which straddles the public and private sector, it is particularly sensitive to the mood within the workforce. When its general secretary, Mr Billy Attley, warned last November that it would be difficult to negotiate a new national agreement because of the level of disillusionment with the Programme for Competitiveness and Work, many observers treated his remarks as ritual sabre rattling.

That is no longer the case. SIPTU itself is currently asking a cross section of its members about their attitudes towards a new agreement. Yet employers, unions and Government can all point to the advantages of national agreements. During the industrial free for all from 1980 to 1987, the number of people in employment fell by 65,000. Since 1987 employment has grown by 152,000 and is expected to increase by another 36,000 this year.

During the free for all, average (industrial earnings fell by 20 per cent in real terms. Between 1987 and 1995, the real value of take home pay for the average industrial worker rose by 12 per cent. For single people, or families with one breadwinner, the increase in take home pay ranged between 18 and 25 per cent. Those with mortgages have benefited to an even greater extent because, as the Minister for Finance, Mr Quinn, constantly reminds us, the economic recovery means that interest rates are at a historic low.

The trouble is that an increasing number of trade unionists are not on the average industrial wage. Untypical work is on the increase, and in some sectors such as retail, casual employment is now the norm. Even for the "average" industrial worker, like the man at Cadbury, there is a growing sense of disillusionment with national agreements because of the constraints on pay in even the most profitable firms.

To quote Mr Attley again, in 30 years of negotiations "I have never come across an agreement as tight as the PCW. There is no leakage in this agreement. The employers have hidden behind the PCW and have rigidly stuck to its terms."

Mr Attley was one of the architects of national agreements. Another, the former president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Mr Phil Flynn, admits that Congress set its sights too low in the last round of talks. Trade unionists are anxious to make up lost ground.

Unions bought into partnership and pay restraint in return for economic growth, tax reform and measures to reduce unemployment. There has been plenty of growth, but nothing like the level of tax reform the ICTU expected, and unemployment has remained stubbornly over the 275,000 mark despite the record growth in jobs.

A more positive attitude towards national agreements might be expected among public service employees. On average they have received increases worth 60 per cent more than their counterparts in the private sector. This is partly because the national agreements were designed to enable them to "catch up" after falling behind in the pay stakes during the free for all of the 1980s.

But militancy is growing, as the recent conferences of IMPACT, the Irish Nurses Organisation and the Civil and Public Service Union have shown.

The trick in any new negotiations will be to produce firm commitments on pay, taxation, union recognition and partnership at local firm level that will convince 482,000 ICTU members and the other unions that gains from national agreements are worth the pain.