NSW: PSA mass meetings

NSW public-sector workers have vowed to ramp up their campaign against cuts in their working conditions, despite warnings that further industrial action could result in hefty fines for their union.

Thousands of members of the Public Service Association (PSA) walked off the job across NSW on Monday as part of co-ordinated stop-work meetings to protest against state government plans to gut the sector.

In Sydney, around 4000 PSA members, bedecked in the union's red and white colours, descended on the Town Hall in the CBD to voice their anger at Premier Barry O'Farrell.

After hearing addresses by PSA members and officials, the union membership unanimously endorsed a wide-ranging resolution that included calls for the government to scrap its planned 2.5 per cent wage cap and job cuts in the sector.

The various speeches were punctuated by intermittent chants of "shame, Barry, shame" from up to 2000 PSA members - including prison officers, school support staff and park rangers - who watched proceedings on a big screen outside the Town Hall.

PSA General Secretary John Cahill said the mass walkout was a reflection of the anger felt by the union's members.

"People are sick of their conditions being cut, they're sick of the job losses and they're sick of the lack of money to run the public sector properly," Mr Cahill told reporters.

A range of industrial action - including half-day and full-day strikes, and local protests - would now be considered by the union's members, Mr Cahill said.

"We'll be relying on our delegates and our delegates' committees to give the union's executive ideas of the forms of action they want to take and when that action will take place."