The Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) has decided not to attend a special conference next week at which the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) hopes the new partnership deal will be ratified.
The conference on Tuesday brings together all the constituent unions of Ictu to vote to accept or reject the partnership agreement.
The Minister of State for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Tony Killeen, urged unions earlier this week to ratify the new partnership deal, Towards 2016, at the conference. It will provide for a 10 per cent pay rise for workers over 27 months.
However, the INO decided yesterday at a special delegate conference at Croke Park not to participate in next Tuesday's vote.
Members agreed not to indicate the INO's position on Towards 2016 until it received the decision from a recent Labour Court hearing on a pay claim.
The court wrote to the union two days ago seeking clarification of elements of the pay claim - which includes a claim for a 10.6 per cent pay rise, a 35-hour working week and a special allowance for nurses working in Dublin - but it is not expected to issue a final recommendation before the end of the month.
Members of the INO will then be balloted on the recommendation and also on the new partnership agreement.
Nurses attending the INO conference indicated they would be angry if their current pay claim was not successful. Marie Gilligan, a nurse in the intellectual disability sector in Sligo, warned: "Next year is a general election year and there are over 40,000 nurses in this country and nurses will be using their vote, not their feet, so we hope that the Government get the message."
The nurses especially want the elimination of an anomaly under which qualified and unqualified childcare workers are paid more than staff nurses and midwives. INO general secretary Liam Doran said the pay claim, which has eight elements, was the priority issue for nurses and midwives. "If we accepted Towards 2016 we would be de facto accepting that you couldn't bring to finality the eight claims in front of the court," he said. The partnership agreement would be voted on by members in due course, he added.
Mandate, which represents 25,000 workers in the retail and bar trades, has also indicated it will not be attending the Ictu conference. It is one of the largest unions opposed to the agreement and intends to remain outside the agreement to pursue local bargaining with employers. But some of the State's largest unions, including Siptu, with 200,000 members; Impact, which represents 56,000 mainly public-sector workers; the TEEU, representing almost 40,000 electrical and engineering workers; and INTO, the largest teachers' union with 27,000 primary school teachers, have already decided to vote in favour.
If unions ratify the agreement, workers will receive their first pay increase provided for under the deal before Christmas.