A senior trade union leader has warned of widespread industrial action if employers do not honour the terms of the national pay deal agreed last year.
Arriving at the meeting of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) executive council Eamonn Devoy of the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU) said it had already balloted 12,000 electricians for industrial action and that if the dispute with employers was not resolved this week it will ballot the remainder of its 40,000 members.
He said that if unions had walked away from an agreement, the employers would have “done the divil and all”.
He said: “They would have had people out beating us up with sticks.”
Mr Devoy said the shoe was now on the other foot, that employers had entered an agreement and they would have to honour it.
The ICTU executive council is considering what action to take following a mass demonstration last weekend against the government’s handling of the economic crisis, in which 120,000 people took part.
Sources said the Ictu executive was likely to consider moves which would involve all unions balloting members on industrial action.
Sources said this would not necessarily mean there would be mass strikes but rather that the unions would be equipped with a mandate if this should prove necessary in the future.
Lower-paid civil servants are to stage strike action on Thursday that will affect all Government departments and social welfare offices.
Speaking today, general secretary designate of the Public Service Executive Union Tom Geraghty said the action was to try and increase the pressure to "re-engage" with the trade union movement.
"We absolutely acknowledge there is a crisis, but what we are saying . . . is that the best way out of our economic crisis is for proper diagologue between the social partners, an act of reengagement by Goverment, to enable us to put together some kind of national understanding on the way out of this particular mess".
A number of other individual public sector unions, including teachers, have begun balloting their members on strike action.
At the same time, informal contacts have been continuing in recent days between senior union leaders and Government and business representatives on a possible resumption of social partnership talks on an economic recovery plan.
There was an acceptance on the Government side that the weekend protest was inevitable. “They needed to have their march.” However, legislation to introduce the controversial pension levy would proceed this week.
Both Government and union sources were wary of any formal meeting this week unless some concrete result was likely to emerge.
Unions are expected this week to consider balloting members in the public and private sectors on industrial action in protest at the Government’s handling of the economic crisis. This follows the mass protest in Dublin in which, according to Garda estimates, up to 120,000 people took part.
“You can say with certainty that the Ictu executive will recognise that there has to be another stage to this,” a senior union leader said.
At the same time, senior union leaders confirmed last night that informal contacts had been taking place both with the Government and employers in recent days over a possible resumption of talks on a national economic recovery plan.
Talks on such a deal broke down earlier this month over the Government’s plans for the pension levy in the public service.
However, senior union sources said if any new talks were to get under way there would have to be some indications that they would be successful.
It is expected that Ictu will seek taxation measures as a counter-balance to the pension levy to signal that all aspects of society would be contributing to the recovery effort.
Speaking during the weekend demonstration Ictu general secretary David Begg said “a business elite” had destroyed the economy and had not yet been held to account for it in any respect. He urged the Government to talk to the trade union movement on its alternative 10-point plan for economic recovery.