The Irish Nurses' Organisation (INO) said today its 40,000 members will participate in whatever campaign of action is agreed by the public service unions as a whole to get the Government to rethink its plans for a pension levy on public sector workers.
It has also urged its members to mobilise immediately and e-mail their local TDs and senators and attend their clinics to point out to them that the levy is an unfair and regressive tax on public sector workers which must be amended.
The union says the proposed levy is far too severe on public servants with low or moderate incomes.
INO general secretary Liam Doran told a press conference in Dublin that all options would be considered at meetings of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions tomorrow and Wednesday when a strategy is devised to try to get the Government to revisit its plans for the levy.
"All options will be put on the table in terms of how we respond to this collectively across the entire public service," he said.
Asked if this included industrial action he said: "Nobody wants industrial action. You are talking to a union that's been down that road in recent times, and nobody wants it."
He said the Government was trying to get €4.3 billion of the €6 billion in savings it wanted to secure this year and next year through withholding pay increases from and this "onerous tax" on 320,000 citizens whose only crime was to work in the public sector.
"That is unfair, unjust and indefensible in the view of the INO, and we will mobilise with our trade union colleagues across the public sector to have the Government think again and secure a more favourable and equitable outcome".
This was unfair when the Government was failing to ensure other sectors of Irish society, including bankers, builders, and speculators were not being asked to contribute their fair share to the country's economic recovery, he said.
The Government, he added, was also failing to tackle a wide range of tax shelters, costing the public exchequer hundreds of millions of euro a year, which were still being availed of, by the well-off.
He said there was no public-sector worker who is oblivious of the economic difficulties facing the country. "There is no public sector worker who will belittle the importance of having a job at this time, but equally there is no public sector worker who would accept that they are the only section of Irish society that has to make a discernible contribution to stabilising the economic difficulties of this country.
"And when public servants see others paying their fair share then I think Government can come with greater legitimacy to all public servants and say 'look, we have a problem, it has to be solved, we're making other sectors of society play their part, now we are asking you to do likewise', but that has happened," Mr Doran said.
He was speaking after a three-hour meeting of the INO's executive council, which met to consider the levy announced by the Taoiseach Brian Cowen last week.