Members of the country’s largest public sector union, Impact have voted overwhelmingly in favour of strikes if the Government introduces further cuts in pay for staff on the State payroll.
The union said this afternoon its public service members had backed industrial action by 86 per cent to 14 per cent. The central executive committee of impact is to meet tomorrow to consider its next steps.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen told the Dáil yesterday that public service pay and pensions remained on the Government’s agenda when considering expenditure reductions in the upcoming budget.
Impact’s General Secretary Peter McCloone said strikes now seemed inevitable because the Government had refused to consider alternatives to a second cut in public service pay in just 18 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 per cent 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 mean strikes now seem inevitable as public servants seek to defend what they have left,” he said.
Mr McCloone said the Government had not responded to an initiative put forward to impact as an alternative to pay cuts which would have involved massive reform of public services “to do more with less money”.
Impact represents around 55,000 staff in the health, local authority and education sectors as well as in the civil service and non-commercial semi state organisations.
The ballot result provides the union with a mandate for strike action in the event of the Government or individual public service employers moving to impose compulsory redundancies, unilateral cuts in working hours, further pay cuts or reductions in pension entitlements.
Mr McCloone said he would be consulting with other public sector unions which are also conduction industrial action ballots before Impact’s executive decided its next move tomorrow.
