FULL-SCALE industrial action by the Civil and Public Services Union (CPSU) will resume in a number of week if members vote against the new pay and reform deal in a forthcoming ballot.
The CPSU ballot on the deal is likely to be completed in 2½ or three weeks.
The general secretary of the union yesterday forecast that its executive would recommend rejection of the new agreement on public service pay and reform when it meets today.
Blair Horan said the indications from branch representatives were that members were deeply unhappy that there were no guarantees in the deal reached at Croke Park a fortnight ago on a reversal of controversial pay cuts for public service staff.
Mr Horan did not anticipate a decision being taken today by the CPSU executive on the reinstatement of industrial action such as bans on answering phones and the closure of public counters in Government offices.
Industrial action by CPSU members over the pay cuts caused chaos to services at the Passport Office several weeks ago. However, this type of action was suspended after the Croke Park agreement.
Mr Horan said if members of CPSU voted against the pay and reform deal in the forthcoming ballot then full-scale industrial action would resume, including in the Passport Office.
He said in the meantime lower-level industrial action, including a ban on carrying out duties associated with vacant posts, would continue.
If the CPSU executive comes out against the deal it will mean that five unions – Impact, TUI, ASTI and Unite – have now either recommended rejection of the proposed agreement to members or said they could not endorse it.
The executives of the PSEU, the INTO and the Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants have supported the proposal.
The national executive of Siptu, the country’s largest union, is to consider the deal tomorrow. Siptu’s health service division backed the agreement at a meeting last week.
On Saturday, Minister of State Peter Power said if the Government was to row back on the public service pay cuts the country would quickly find itself in a position similar to Greece.
Speaking on RTÉ's Saturday Viewprogramme, he said those in the unions who were advocating a rejection of the Croke Park deal or who said they could not recommend it had a real duty to outline to ordinary members what the alternatives were.
He said on the one hand if the Government was to do as some had suggested and reverse “the painful decision to reduce public sector pay that was taken as part of the budgetary process this year, very quickly this country would be in situation similar to Greece”.
He added: “On the other hand, the other alternative course would be a very sustained and widespread campaign of industrial action.”
Mr Power said the Croke Park deal was in the middle of these two alternatives and it was a fair offer in the circumstances in which the country found itself.
Meanwhile Fine Gael’s deputy finance spokesman Kieran O’Donnell has warned that members of public sector unions are likely to vote against the Croke Park deal because of a “breakdown of trust” in Government.
Mr O’Donnell said the public pay talks should have been “put to bed” before the last Budget, adding Fine Gael had argued that public servants earning less than €30,000 should not face pay cuts.
"I would hope it wouldn't come to that situation but I think the Government, by just the way they've gone about their business and in terms of the commitments they've broken, that the worry here is that the public sector membership will vote against this deal. We would hope that wouldn't happen," he told RTÉ Radio One's This Weekprogramme.