The Irish Bank Officials' Association (IBOA), which represents the bulk of Bank of Ireland's 18,000 workers, voted yesterday to ballot for industrial action if management tries to use compulsory redundancies to cut jobs.
The IBOA's biannual delegate conference unanimously backed a motion yesterday declaring that the union would "ballot all members in Bank of Ireland for a campaign of industrial action, up to and including work stoppages, if the bank proceeds with its plan for compulsory redundancies".
Bank of Ireland plans to cut 2,160 jobs under a restructuring announced last month.
An IBOA spokesman confirmed afterwards that "work stoppages" meant strikes. The motion means that if the bank begins to lay off staff against their will, the union can immediately hold a secret ballot of its members in the bank asking them to vote for industrial action.
Industrial relations law demands that all votes for strikes and other industrial action are by way of secret ballot.
IBOA general secretary, Larry Broderick, stressed that the union was opposed to compulsory redundancies.
However, when he was announcing the job cuts plan last month, Bank of Ireland chief executive Brian Goggin said that management would resort to compulsory lay-offs if necessary. Mr Goggin revealed details of the plan on the same day that the bank announced €1.3 billion in profits.
Addressing the meeting, Ciarán Mahon, Bank of Ireland's IBOA officer and the motion's proposer, accused the financial institution of ditching its staff in the pursuit of profit.
"This concerns staff in departments and centres which it seems will be removed with a stroke of the pen from the balance sheet of Bank of Ireland," Mr Mahon warned.
A member of the union's Bank of Ireland executive committee, Bernie O'Reilly, said its employees had co-operated with more change than most others in Irish banking.
She added that historically, compulsory redundancies had never been a feature of the financial services industry.
In an indirect reference to the dispute, the Minister for Finance, Brian Cowen, who opened the conference, called on management in the sector as a whole to have regard for workers' rights.
"The core concept of partnership is the acceptance, by employers, of employees as stakeholders with rights and interests to be considered in the context of major decisions affecting their employment," he said.
Former Labour Relations Commission (LRC) chairman, Kieran Mulvey, will chair talks between the union and management next week.
