As progress in decentralisation of civil servants to the regions was debated here last night, the outsourcing of public service work to private contractors also emerged as a matter of acute concern to delegates at the annual conference of the Civil Public and Services Union.
Delegates urged union leaders to resist the trend which is increasingly seen as eroding public service employment. The importance of maintaining public funding of An Post particularly to secure post services to remote rural areas was emphasised.
Under the new partnership agreement, even core work could be outsourced, the conference representing 13,000 lower-paid workers in the State and semi-State sectors heard.
There seemed to be "an irrational belief" that clerical officer work could be outsourced without affecting services; in fact the fixation with outsourcing would adversely affect those services, union president Betty Tyrrell-Collard said.
The move by the new National Consumer Agency to use private-sector call centre services without negotiation or consultation could signpost further losses of jobs at clerical officer level unless the union resisted the move, she said.
Ciarán Ryan of the Department of Agriculture, who is on the national executive of the CPSU, said unions' acceptance under the current partnership deal to allow individual departments to outsource "to save money" had "opened the floodgates".
In his own department, van-drivers and cleaners were told their jobs were being outsourced as soon as they retired. This was under way in other departments and was to ensure new workers filling those grades no longer enjoyed Civil Service status.
Mr Ryan urged general secretary Blair Horan to tackle outsourcing "head on". "We oppose outsourcing; we oppose privatisation of our jobs."
He also spoke of a general complacency in the trade union movement and of a feeling that unions could do nothing. We have one great weapon - that is our labour. We can withdraw that labour at any time," he said.
Revenue delegate Hugh Maguire said it was losing one warehouse at Santry to outsourcing. "A lot of our work is being outsourced, is going to happen in all the departments. Is there anything this union can do?"
Assistant general secretary Derek Mullen said public-sector workers had to learn the disastrous lessons of privatisation from such as that of the prison service in Britain and had to protect public sector jobs.
Mr Horan said that under the current partnership agreement, there was increased provision for outsourcing and unlike previous agreements, "core work" could not be outsourced where there was a backlog.
However this still had to go through procedures if challenged by the unions. "We still do have some protection. They can't outsource to get the job done cheaper," Mr Horan said.
Meanwhile on the eve of the 350-delegate conference in Tralee, Eoin Ronayne, CPSU's incoming deputy general secretary, called on members to make proper State funding of An Post "an election issue" to secure a vital social service as well as jobs for workers.
"An Post is expected to deliver post to every address the length and breadth of the country without any recognition of the costs involved." Older people in remote areas often depended on An Post for daily human contact, he said.
Ms Tyrrell-Collard also hit out at criticisms by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern of public sector-unions in the Dáil recently over the hold-up in appointing 60 new labour inspectors to the new Employment Rights Agency.
On decentralisation, Mr Ronayne said the union representing 13,000 clerical officer grades in the public and semi-state sector (which includes Government departments as well as agencies like Fás) was largely supportive of the move. Decentralised grades represented by their union were "almost over-subscribed" by members.