Thousands of electricians strike in Ireland

* Around 10,500 electricians strike

* Major union says it would be in favour of joining them

* Electricity supply unaffected

DUBLIN, July 6 (Reuters) - Thousands of electricians went on strike around Ireland on Monday in a major test of government and employer efforts to cut pay during a record recession.

From factory floors to corporate suites, wages and salaries have been falling as businesses adjust to plummeting demand and try to claw back competitiveness lost during the boom years of the "Celtic Tiger" economy.

The electricians' dispute centres around wage increases of around 11 percent that they say are owed to them for a number of years. Employers have said they can't afford to give them more money and instead are looking for a wage cut of 10 percent.

"This will have a major impact on the whole country and not just the construction industry but on the whole economy," Eddie Keenan, director of industrial relations at the Construction Industry Federation (CIF), said.

Around 10,500 electrical contractors are taking part in the strike, the first major industrial action since Ireland skidded into recession last year, and pickets have been set up at construction sites at Dublin Airport, the main soccer stadium and companies such as Intel (INTC.O).

The country's electricity supply will not be affected.

SIPTU, one of Ireland's largest unions with 200,000 members, said it supported the electricians and signalled it would be prepared to join them.

SIPTU's president Jack O'Connor said if the electricians requested an all-out picket at the construction sites his union would ballot members working at those sites.

"If we allow any group of workers in our economy to be isolated and beaten into the ground, which is the objective here, then it will be driven across the economy to affect all workers," O'Connor told state radio.

Employers have been able to push through wages cuts of around 10 percent or more in Ireland as dole queues balloon and people with jobs count themselves lucky.

The government, meanwhile, has had to put the country on a five-year austerity diet after a debt-fuelled property boom turned Ireland from economic star to one of the industrialised world's worst performers.

Prime Minister Brian Cowen has vowed to get the budget deficit under an EU limit of three percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2013 from a targeted 10.75 percent this year.

He is under pressure from the International Monetary Fund and others to cut public sector pay in the budget in December.

Cowen, a former finance minister, has said he was committed to taking tough action but his junior coalition partner the Green Party and members of his own party may baulk at further pain after cutbacks, tax hikes and the imposition of a pension levy prompted 100,000 people to take to the streets in February.

The CIF's Keenan signalled employers were open to negotiating with the electricians and would be prepared to pay them more when the economy recovers.

"We have never said that this money will never be paid, we are just saying we can't afford to pay it now." (Reporting by Carmel Crimmins; Editing by Jon Boyle)