Unions show nerve for a fight as focus now shifts to Cowen
UNTIL now, the public sector campaign against the €1bn Budget pay cut had moved at a snail's pace.
All that changed dramatically yesterday when unions announced that their go-slow industrial action would accelerate into very real strike action.
Many seasoned observers did not think the union leaders would do it. With few Arthur Scargills among the ranks of the mostly moderate public sector union leadership, there appeared to be little will to push industrial action any further.
They are more used to late-night talks in Government Buildings than issuing threats, but the memory of the Budget was fading fast over time.
In a bulletin to members, IMPACT had cast doubt on all-out strikes when it admitted that they would only eat further into members' pay packets.
It seemed that the campaign over the pay cut would suffer the same fate as the pension levy protests.
Then, suddenly, lower-paid civil servants put it up to the rest of their colleagues.
The 13,000 members of the militant Civil, Public and Services Union, who are reeling from the effect of the 5pc pay cut on earnings below €30,000, served notice of strike action on Friday.
Unpopular
Blair Horan's CPSU had been the first union to down tools over payroll cutbacks in the past and there is little doubt that it will do it again this time.
Speaking after yesterday's meeting of the ICTU Public Services Committee, its chairman Peter McLoone warned that the country was now on the brink of "Armageddon".
The ball is now firmly in the Government's court. It could call the unions' bluff and continue to insist that it won't agree to talks about reversing the cut.
Unions would then be forced to step up what is likely to be a deeply unpopular campaign.
There is no doubt that Taoiseach Brian Cowen privately longs to get Mr McLoone and Co back to the negotiating table.
His dilemma is how to convince Finance Minister Brian Lenihan to accept a promise of restoring the pay cut, however vague, without losing face.
It would be naive to think that a seasoned negotiator like Mr McLoone would make such a drastic announcement about strikes without having a plan B in his back pocket.
Desperate moments between the social partners have a miraculous habit of being resolved by talks at the eleventh hour.
The 'get-out' clause for both sides might lie in Mr McLoone's offer of major reforms of the public sector in return for a reversal of the pay cuts, not all at once, but "over time".
All eyes now rest on Mr Cowen. Will he respond in kind to the unions' new-found aggression, or does his punch-drunk Government no longer have the stomach for the fight?
- Anne-Marie Walsh
Irish Independent
