The announcement by the vice-president of ICTU, Mr Joe O'Toole, who is also general secretary of the INTO, that he intends balloting INTO members for industrial action if they reject the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness is likely to be raised at today's meeting of the ICTU executive.
Several senior trade unionists are concerned at Mr O'Toole's "go-it-alone" strategy, especially as it still seems likely that next week's special delegate conference of Congress will vote to accept the PPF.
Traditionally, even unions opposed to national agreements have accepted the majority decision of the ICTU conferences.
Yesterday the general secretary of the Civil and Public Service Union, Mr Blair Horan, confirmed that he had raised the issue with the general secretary of ICTU, Mr Peter Cassells. The CPSU has issued ballot papers on the new agreement without a recommendation for acceptance or rejection.
In response to a question Mr Horan said: "We have had quite a constructive debate on the issues, and the question was raised at our executive of what would happen if we rejected the agreement and the SDC [special delegate conference of ICTU] passed it.
"We discussed it and we are in no doubt that it must be the SDC which decides the issue. The alternative is for national negotiations to collapse."
The Mandate trade union is advising its members to reject the deal. However, its deputy general secretary, Mr John Douglas, said he found it strange that the vice-president of Congress was suggesting his union need not be bound by a majority decision of ICTU. "It is a dangerous precedent, and if other people followed his example the whole glue of social partnership and the cohesion of the trade union movement would fall apart," Mr Douglas said.
"We have an executive meeting of our own union immediately after the ICTU special delegate conference. We are going to come under extreme pressure if Congress accepts the new agreement. When the vice-president of ICTU says `I'm going to do whatever I want', our executive will ask us why we can't do the same."
However, another opponent of the PPF, the ATGWU's Irish secretary, Mr Mick O'Reilly, said Mr O'Toole was "trail-blazing for all unions".
"I have been urging freedom for unions to make claims regardless of the outcome of the conference, and Joe is saying we can all do that. Coming from a vice-president of Congress that is good news," Mr O'Reilly said.
He said he would be at today's executive meeting to lend his support to Mr O'Toole's position. The issue is not on today's agenda but it will be surprising if it is not discussed.
Yesterday most trade-union leaders were reluctant to comment on Mr O'Toole's public position. They accept that the unexpectedly strong opposition to the PPF within the Irish National Teachers' Organisation has forced him to put forward industrial action as the only logical alternative to acceptance of the national agreement. As one of them put it: "If the INTO membership accepts the deal the issue remains academic."