Fórsa will host a special joint meeting of its Local Government and Municipal Employees divisions on Monday 3rd December, to formulate the union’s response to government proposals for the transformation of Irish Water.

Commentators have credited Fórsa with forcing a Government U-turn on an Irish Water referendum after the Cabinet decided last week to consult the Attorney General (AG) on a plebiscite to guarantee that water services stay in public ownership.

Fórsa has added its voice to international trade union demands for reduced working time to ensure that workers share the benefits of in increased productivity from technological change.

A senior Fórsa official has called on the Public Service Pay Commission (PSPC) to press on with examinations of recruitment and retention difficulties in all parts of the public service where it has identified issues, now that it has concluded its work on nurses and medical consultants

Fórsa has reiterated its concerns about the failure to address the gender imbalance in top local government posts as new figures revealed that just 28% of local authority chief executives are women.

Fórsa has welcomed government plans to increase paid parental leave from two to seven weeks for each parent by 2021, but says the move is long overdue.

The persistent gender pay gap means that women have to work the equivalent of 67 extra days each year to earn the same as their average male counterpart, according to Fórsa official Geraldine O’Brien.

The number of Irish workers who described themselves as stressed at work more than doubled between 2010 and 2015, according to new research from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).