Most manual workers with local authorities, health boards and voluntary hospitals receive occupational pensions of between £17 and £25 a week, according to SIPTU regional secretary Mr Brendan Hayes.
Even a worker with the maximum service, 40 years, received only £34.50p a week because of flaws in the way the scheme was administered.
Mr Hayes has been appointed to oversee the union's campaign to secure better public service pensions for 20,000 members. He warned that if progress was not made in negotiations with the Government a strike ballot would be held shortly after Christmas.
He said the issue of pensions and a national minimum wage were closely linked. The guarantee of a decent income "should not cease at retirement".
A manual worker in the health services on £225 a week had an occupational pension of £78 a week. But when deductions were made for his income from an ordinary old age pension, the value of the occupational pension was only £34.50p. That was because he was not entitled to a pension worth more than half his pay at retirement. While he welcomed the Government's announcement that it intended to increase the current old age pension from £78 a week to £100, the only effect it would have for those workers was to see their occupational pension reduced to £12.50p, if they were lucky enough to have 40 years' service.
Most had between 20 and 30 years' service, he said, and many would not receive a penny more as a result of increases in the old age pension. Mr Jack Kelly, of the Dublin health and services branch of SIPTU, who helped organise a one-day strike at Dublin hospitals over pensions last year, told the conference that passing resolutions would not get the problem solved. It would take industrial action and he was glad to see the leadership "fully behind the campaign to get decent pensions".