Siptu leader warns workers over deal

REJECTION OF the proposed public service pay and reform deal and renewed industrial action would be unlikely to result in gains for workers, Siptu president Jack O’Connor said yesterday.

Mr O’Connor, who is also current president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu), warned unions of the consequences of rejecting the deal reached with the Government last week.

Failure to accept what was currently available could leave workers in worse circumstances, he said.

“There is always the possibility that by fighting on we would forfeit what’s available now and lose out at a time when perhaps the best thing to do is to adopt a more strategic medium- to longer-term approach,” he said.

“You don’t have to be a genius to work out that if a proposal is put on the table and if the proposal is rejected, then we’re back to square one.”

The agreement worked out with Government was a “deal for unprecedented circumstances”, he said, but in the medium to long term it would yield security on jobs, pay and pensions and provide a framework for recovering ground lost as a result of pay cuts.

If union members chose to reject the deal, they would have to consider how that rejection would play with the public, he said in an interview on the RTÉ radio programme This Week.

“It’s a question as to what’s the best thing to do. Is it better to fight on in the knowledge we’re still living in a ruined economy and that any action we take will be depicted as an attack on the citizens of the country?”

Economic circumstances dictated that no matter what agreement was reached, it would always be difficult for workers to swallow, he added.

“I don’t see further action yielding what some of the people who might be opposed to the proposal might envisage it would yield.”

Ictu is preparing to embark on an extensive programme of national consultation on the deal. However, if a decision was made to reject the proposals, an escalation of the industrial relations campaign was inevitable Mr O’Connor said.