The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) has joined the TEEU and Unite in rejecting the Croke Park public sector pay and reform agreement today.
Some 84 per cent of the INMO’s members voted to reject the proposals following the results of a ballot. The union has in excess of 40,000 members.
INMO general secretary Liam Doran said the result is the “latest illustration of nurses and midwives speaking out, and speaking up, for their patients”.
He described the deal as “totally unacceptable, harmful and, notwithstanding our current economic situation, totally unjustifiable” and said the union is available for discussions on an alternative approach to reforming our health service.
This evening trade union Unite said it had rejected the proposals.
Its 6,000 members in health, education, local authorities, government agencies and the civil service voted two to one against the pay and reform plan.
Regional secretary Jimmy Kelly said: “The anger of our members and of most workers in the public service burns as strongly today as it did when the first cuts were made last year.
“This country needs jobs to prevent complete economic collapse. Jobs are lost through cutting in a recession.
“We accept that we are in a different place to that which we were in three years ago but this proposal was based on inflicting savage cuts and asking for us to trust the Government. That trust is gone.”
Earlier the TEEU, representing some 1,200 craft workers in the public service, rejected the deal.
The union rejected the proposed deal by roughly 2:1 in a vote today.
Speaking today, Pat Kavanagh of the TEEU said members had voted against the proposal due to anger over pay cuts and efforts to contract their work out to more expensive contractors.
Asked how non-public sector members of the union would feel about the rejection of a deal that protected jobs and promised no further pay cuts, Mr Kavanagh said "I'm sure all our members will stand full-square behind members of the public service because every member knows that there is a sustained attack on wages on both sides of the public and private sectors."
Meanwhile members of the Medical Laboratory Scientists Association (MLSA) approved the proposals today.
Some 81 per cent of the union’s members in the public service who participated in the ballot voted in favour of the proposals.
The MLSA, an affiliate of Siptu, has 2,000 members with over 1,800 working in the public service.
Last Friday, members of two other teaching unions, the ASTI and the TUI, voted to reject the Croke Park deal while members of the INTO accepted the agreement in a ballot.