At the second time of asking, Ireland voted 2:1 in favour of the Lisbon Treaty, with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and its major affiliates recommending a YES vote, favouring the employment protections afforded by the Charter of Fundamental Rights. The UK government exercises an opt out on central issues.
Having voted YES to Europe, the Irish trade union movement is now struggling to come to terms with the downside of austerity measures imposed after the economic collapse, many of which it can be argued are a result of the big business/anti public services agenda of European union.
Members of UNISON sister trade union,IMPACT, have voted overwhelmingly in favour of strikes if the Government moves to impose a second public service pay cut. The union has announced that its public service members had backed industrial action by 86% to 14% on a 69% turnout in a national ballot. This compares to a 65% vote for industrial action – just short of the two-thirds required under IMPACT’s rules – on a 53% turnout in a similar ballot last March.
IMPACT’s Central Executive Committee meets this week to consider its next steps, including the whole workforce day of action called by ICTU for 6 November, in the face of the collapse of the next stage of talks on Partnership, which has underpinned industrial relations in Ireland for the last 21 years. But the union’s general secretary Peter McLoone said strikes now seemed inevitable because of the Government’s refusal to consider alternatives to a second public service pay cut in just eight months.
“This ballot represents a massive shift in opinion among public servants since the imposition of the so-called pension levy last March. Every public servant has already suffered a 7.5% pay cut this year, yet the Government is clearly determined to come back again and again to slash their family incomes. Our members don’t want strikes or the disruption they will bring, but the Government’s refusal to consider alternatives means strikes now seem inevitable as public servants seek to defend what they have left,” he said.
Mr McLoone said IMPACT had offered to negotiate an alternative to pay cuts, in the form of a massive transformation of public services to do much more with less money. But the Government had not even responded to this initiative.
The result gives the union a mandate for strike action by 55,000 public servants in health, local authorities, education, the civil service and non-commercial semi-state organisations if the Government or individual public service employers move to impose compulsory redundancies, unilateral cuts in working hours, further pay cuts, or reductions in pension entitlements.
Mr McLoone said he would be consulting with other public service unions, which are also conducting industrial action ballots, as part of the whole workforce day of action called by ICTU for 6 November, in the face of the collapse of the next stage of talks with government on Partnership, which has underpinned industrial relations in Ireland for the last 21 years, before IMPACT’s executive decides its next move.
IMPACT has over 65,000 members but only balloted those directly employed by the Government. The ballot did not include some 10,000 IMPACT members who work in the private sector, commercial semi-state companies, or state-funded voluntary and community bodies.
