WORKERS should vote against the new national agreement, Partnership 2000, and trade unionists should get back to local bargaining, a trade union leader said yesterday at the presentation in Dublin of the "Campaign Against Partnership 2000".
The Irish secretary of the Amalgamated Transport Workers Union, Mr Mick O'Reilly, said "the sky won't fall in" if the package is rejected.
Instead, he said, it would allow unions to gain better pay rises for members through "creative" local bargaining. However, he did not write off the negotiations on Partnership 2000 as a complete waste. If nothing else, the trade union negotiators had established a floor for future claims.
Mr O'Reilly said that during the early 1980s, national agreements broke down after trade union leaders failed to push employers and the government of the day beyond 12 per cent. Subsequently, workers won increases of 12.5 to 20 per cent in local bargaining.
He rejected the notion that the unemployed and other socially excluded groups would suffer if there was no agreement. He said that the main negotiators had "signed off" on Partnership 2000 before the unemployed were "fixed up".
The trade union movement had a historic commitment to the unemployed and that would remain, whether or not there was an agreement, he said.
Mr Des Bonass, a member of she Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed, said his executive was calling for critical acceptance of the new agreement only because it was fearful of being left out in the cold, Now, it at least had representation in the monitoring mechanisms for implementing the new agreement. Mr Bonass was speaking in a personal capacity.
Ms Carolann Duggan, a SIPTU member in Waterford, said. The country is booming, the employers and the banks are making a fortune in profits, up 45 per cent, according to Billy Attley. Yet the workers who created all the wealth are being told to take a rise of 7.4 cent over three years and three months."
Mr Terry Kelleher, of the Civil and Public Service Union, said a motion to recommend rejection of Partnership 2000 was defeated by only one vote at a recent executive meeting. Public service workers had been promised an escape from the poverty trap through restructuring deals under the Programme for Competitiveness and Work, but had seen senior civil servants and high earning professionals receive huge increases while they were left behind.
Mr Richie Browne, a TEAM Aer Lingus shop steward, summed up the mood when he said he had not received "a cost of living" increase since the Programme for Economic and Social Progress. He said he had been locked out for six months for refusing to accept a 10 per pay cut with the full backing of the Government. "If that's their idea of partnership they can stick it."