SIPTU has quadrupled its strike-pay budget for this year and is prepared for a return to free collective bargaining, branch officials were told yesterday.
They were also warned, however, that it might not be the right time to jettison social partnership in favour of free-for-all pay bargaining.
The union's executive will decide today whether to recommend acceptance of the new partnership programme, Sustaining Progress, to the 200,000 SIPTU members who begin balloting next week.
At a consultative conference yesterday, leaders of the union heard trenchant criticisms of the programme from activists who will campaign for a No vote. These were slightly outnumbered, however, by speakers who declared that the deal was the best available and should therefore be supported.
As the country's biggest union, SIPTU's stance will be critical to the outcome when the Irish Congress of Trade Unions votes on the agreement at a special delegate conference on March 26th.
Voting strength is weighted in favour of smaller unions, but about 20 per cent of the votes will be cast by SIPTU delegates.
Mr Jack O'Connor, the union's vice-president, told yesterday's conference at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin that union negotiators had pushed the recent partnership talks to the point of breakdown.
Members would have to ask themselves if this low point in the economic cycle was the right time to engage in free collective bargaining rather than "mark time" by accepting the 18-month pay deal on offer.
If members did reject the agreement, however, he believed "we would give a good account of ourselves in employment-to-employment bargaining.
"Our national executive has already voted to quadruple the budget for strike pay this year. But we do have to ask if it's the right time," he said.
Ms Vivienne Rhatigan, of the Mayo No 2 branch, said 15 years of social partnership had delivered housing shortages, increased numbers of homeless people, rising childcare costs, an increase in violent crime, towns and cities "swamped with drugs" and health service inequalities.
It had also brought some benefits, but workers were now working harder and for longer hours.
Mr Padraig Mulligan, president of the Athlone branch, said free collective bargaining would not have delivered "a portion" of the wage increases secured under the PPF.
It would be easy, he said, for those in safe and secure employment to turn their backs on the 7 per cent pay increase on offer in the new deal, and the increase in statutory redundancy payments.
He asked where the solidarity in free collective bargaining was at a time when the economy was not doing well and those on low pay, in employments with tight profit margins were must vulnerable.
