SOCIAL WELFARE offices are to be closed from 1pm today – one of the busiest days in the week for people signing on – as the industrial dispute in the public sector escalates.
Passport offices in Dublin and Cork will be also be closed in the afternoon as part of industrial action being undertaken in protest at pay cuts introduced by the Government in the budget.
Bans on answering phones will also be put in place at various stages today in the departments of Foreign Affairs, Social and Family Affairs, Environment, and Education and in the Office of Public Works.
The action is being undertaken by members of the Civil Public and Services Union (CPSU) and Public Service Executive Union (PSEU) which represent lower- and mid-ranking civil servants.
Union and management sources indicated last night that the proposed action at Department of Social and Family Affairs offices today would not affect payments to clients. A spokeswoman for the department said last night that it would advise clients of the disruption as soon as it became aware of the extent of the action.
On previous occasions, clients who were due to sign on in department offices during periods of industrial action had been asked to come back on another day.
Passport and Department of Social and Family Affairs public offices were closed last Friday for a half-day as part of the industrial action campaign.
However, it is understood that Wednesday is a busier day for signing on than Friday, although the bulk of clients concerned sign on in the morning rather than the afternoon.
Separately yesterday, it emerged that nurses are to propose a campaign of rolling work stoppages – possibly lasting two hours – in hospitals and other health services.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) said that its executive council had yesterday voted to support “a significant escalation” of the current industrial action campaign.
It said that it would be proposing at a meeting of the Public Services Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu)next week that an escalation of the campaign should involve a withdrawal of labour for short periods on a rolling basis across the entire public service. It said that such action should begin on an agreed date.
Impact, the country’s largest public sector union, has already proposed a similar plan for rolling work stoppages, to be considered at the Ictu meeting next week.
Speaking last night, INMO general secretary Liam Doran said: “It is our view this escalation must involve strike action including the withdrawal of labour and should be commenced as soon as possible.”
He said that the Government had to be persuaded that the current campaign would continue, and be escalated further, unless and until it came back to the negotiating table and accepted that the issues of reversing the pay cuts, guaranteeing future pay, protecting existing pension arrangements, protecting job security and removing the threat of out-sourcing had to be fully addressed.
Yesterday, thousands of members of Impact introduced a ban on answering phones in the Dublin/North East region of the Health Service Executive (HSE) in protest at the pay cuts.
The HSE said last night that the action had inconvenienced patients but that there had been no serious incidents.
The Government has said that it wants to engage in talks with the trade unions over public service reform. However, it has ruled out a reversal of the pay cuts introduced in the budget for 2010.
329,706 DAYS SURGE IN DAYS LOST TO INDUSTRIAL ACTION
THE NUMBER of days lost to industrial disputes surged last year, according to figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
During 2009 there were 329,706 days lost as a result of action compared to 4,179 days a year earlier. A total of 23 industrial disputes took place in 2009 as against 12 in 2008.
The majority of days lost occurred in the fourth quarter of 2009 where 248,176 days were lost. This compares to just 1,397 days lost for the same three-month period in 2008.
Public sector-led disputes accounted for about 75 per cent of the total days lost. The one-day national public sector dispute, held in November, involved some 265,400 workers and accounted for 237,268 days lost.
Overall, eight industrial disputes were in progress during the fourth quarter of last year and these involved 266,334 workers in eight firms.
The CSO calculates days lost to industrial action by multiplying people who participated by the number of normal working days they were involved in the dispute.
