While trade union leaders are urging their members in local authorities and the health services to work normally today there is still a serious risk of sporadic strikes by members of the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union.
Cork and Wexford are the two centres where local TEEU activists are thought most likely to mount lightning pickets today, but other centres might be affected as well.
A document explaining a deal for craft workers reached at the Labour Relations Commission at the weekend was distributed yesterday to all eight craft unions at local level.
The deal led to the cancellation of a planned national strike by local authority general and craft workers, pending a ballot. However, an unofficial dispute disrupted services at Waterford Regional Hospital, Ardkeen, on Monday and spread to Kilkenny and Limerick yesterday.
Picketers claimed they had not been officially informed of the settlement terms reached at the LRC in Dublin.
Craft union leaders disputed this and said workers had been informed of what was going on and that there would be a ballot on the issues.
The current series of one-day unofficial strikes are being driven by the regional committees of the TEEU in defiance of head office instructions. The other seven craft unions and SIPTU have been able to persuade the vast majority of their members to work normally while the ballot takes place on the latest proposals to settle the long-running analog dispute.
The analog is a complex basket of pay rates in 17 private and semi-State companies which is used to calculate parity for manual workers in the local authorities and health services. Theoretically, the workers concerned are entitled to it automatically.
However, the formula and data are themselves so complex as to be the subject of dispute. Also, the analog agreement commits the workers to buying into change at a similar pace to their counterparts in the analog companies.
Since the agreement was made in 1979 rationalisation and restructuring have been taking place much faster in the commercial sector. The attitude to changes in work practices in health boards, local authorities and hospitals is still rooted in the past.
In the latest agreement the craftworkers have come within 42p of the £25.26p a week pay claim put in by their unions, but in return they are being asked for more productivity and acceptance that it includes the 2 per cent local bargaining pay rise due under Partnership 2000.
The TEEU militants want the full £25.26p with no strings attached and backdated to July 1997. Their pickets are a test of the resolve of other workers in the sector ahead of a meeting of craft union representatives to discuss the package on Saturday. With the economy booming they see no reason for accepting less.