TRADE UNIONS and associations representing over 100,000 public servants who provide round-the-clock frontline services have said they will not accept cuts proposed in the recent McCarthy report.
The Irish Nurses Organisation (INO), the Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA), Siptu, the Garda Representative Association, the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors, PDforra (which represents non-officer ranks in the Defence Forces) and the Prison Officers Association yesterday joined together to form a new alliance to campaign against the McCarthy recommendations.
The Frontline Services Alliance is to hold regional meetings to highlight opposition to the McCarthy report. While some of the unions, such as those representing nurses, indicated that they could take industrial action if cuts to pay and conditions were introduced, others said it would be unlawful for them to go on strike and they would seek to persuade the Government not to implement McCarthy.
The McCarthy report recommended cutbacks in a number of allowances and premium rates paid to frontline public servants. It also called for a new benchmarking process to examine pay levels for all public sector staff.
The general secretary of the INO, Liam Doran, said the McCarthy report was a flawed document with a management bias. The McCarthy recommendations had the simple agenda of “cutting, slashing and burning” services for those most in need of them.
The chairman of the alliance, Des Kavanagh of the PNA, said for the Government to target frontline workers was irresponsible and it must be stopped.
“McCarthy’s recommendations seek to revert nurses and public service workers to pre-1970s conditions of employment. We will never accept that working unsocial hours – at night, weekends and bank holidays – should attract no additional earnings.”
The general secretary of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors, Joe Dirwan, said his members had taken enough and had paid enough. Through a combination of levies, taxation and PRSI, his members had seen their incomes fall by over 12 per cent in the last year.
The deputy general secretary of the Prison Officers Association, Eugene Dennehy, said many of his members were down more than €4,000 in pay as a result of the pension levy.
Mr Doran said under law and under the Constitution there were a number of organisations in the alliance who were restricted in relation to industrial action and that would be fully respected.
“The weight of this alliance, we hope, will be the collective moral persuasion that we want to bring to bear upon the body politic to accept that we are paying our fair share and that they will think again.”
The general secretary of the Garda Representative Association, PJ Stone, said the end of the process should not be considered before the beginning was reached.
“At the end of the day, if the Government is going to act with diktat well then the decisions that have to be made at that stage will be made at that stage and not until then.”
The general secretary of PDforra, Gerry Rooney, said it would be unlawful for his organisation to engage in industrial action and that was not going to happen. What it was about was persuading all those involved of the potential damage that could be done if the Government proceeded with McCarthy.
Public sector pay and penisons have to be reduced if Ireland is to regain its competitiveness, former taoiseach Dr Garret FitzGerald said yesterday.
Both the public and private sectors had been paying themselves “too much”, he said during an interview on TV3.