HIGHER CIVIL servants are balloting for industrial action as part of the current campaign against pay cuts.
The Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants said that the proposed industrial action would involve introducing a ban on co-operation with the Government reform programme for the public service and not carrying out the work associated with vacant posts.
The Association of Higher Civil Servants, which represents principal officers and assistant principal officers, has traditionally been viewed as one of the more moderate representative bodies in the public service and it has engaged in a wide-scale internal consultation process in advance of its decision to ballot members.
In a bulletin to branch secretaries, the association’s general secretary Dave Thomas said that the industrial action covered by the ballot would involve:
Not carrying out the work associated with vacant posts;
Not co-operating with the Transformation Agenda; and
No new cross-stream reporting arrangements.
The bulletin said that if a member of the Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants was suspended for taking industrial action, the other members in that department or office would agree to support the suspended member by taking strike action.
The association is to issue ballot papers next week.
It also advised members in relation to the current industrial action being undertaken by other public sector unions that, while they should continue to do their own work as normal, they should not do work of Civil, Public and Services Union, Impact, or Public Service Executive Union (PSEU) members.
Mr Thomas also said that if principal officers or assistant principal officers normally prepared the answer to a parliamentary questions or worked on speeches, then there was no reason why they could not continue to do this.
“If the material is usually prepared by a CPSU or PSEU member, then the AHCPS member should not carry out this work,” he said.
Meanwhile, public counters in immigration centres and in Garda stations which are operated by civil servants will be closed for a half day today as part of the ongoing industrial action by civil servants.
Members of the CPSU are expected to close public counters in the Department of Justice, Department of Transport, Department of Finance, Department of the Taoiseach, and the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism this morning and put in place a ban on answering phones in the afternoon.
Members of Impact, the country’s largest public service union, are expected to put in place a ban on answering phones in the Health Service Executive southern region from 9am to 1pm today. Yesterday, members of the union, which represents lower-paid civil servants, closed social welfare offices and passport offices in the afternoon, as part of the protest.
The Public Services Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, which is co-ordinating the overall campaign in protest at the pay cuts, is to meet next Monday to consider plans to escalate the industrial action.
Impact and the Irish Nurses’ and Midwives’ Association have proposed that there should be rolling work stoppages across the civil and public service.