Unions to meet on Friday to consider pay talks invitation

A Government invitation to negotiate a new national public sector pay agreement will be considered by a meeting of the unions involved on Friday with talks at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) expected to get under way over the course of next week.

The officers of the public services committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) met remotely on Wednesday morning and referred the invitation to a gathering of all 19 unions involved on Friday.

In a statement issued after Tuesday’s meeting, the officers said Friday’s meeting would consider the basis on which they might enter talks. Although there is no confirmation, the invitation from Government on a deal to replace Building Momentum, which expires at the end of the year, is expected to be accepted.

In addition to pay increases compensating members for the high rates of inflation over the past year, the unions are looking for changes in the way industrial relations are handled in the public sector and new mechanisms to deal with local claims, many of them based on what the unions argue is a significant evolution in a large number of roles over the past decade and a half.

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In their statement on Tuesday, the unions said their desire has been to complete a replacement deal for Building Momentum before the end of December. But speaking at Siptu’s biennial conference in Galway this week, the union’s Deputy General Secretary John King said that preliminary talks that have taken place between the two sides over the past couple of months had highlighted some of the differences that existed on key issues.

Siptu’s General Secretary, Joe Cunningham, said at the conference on Wednesday morning that while the decision on whether to accept the invitation would be made on Friday morning, he hoped the talks would progress.

In addition to Siptu, other unions involved in the talks include Forsa; the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation; the Irish National Teachers Organisation; Unite; the Irish Medical Organisation; PDForra; and Connect.

Some 340,000 workers will be directly impacted by the outcome.

The Siptu conference in Galway also heard from the British trade union leader Mick Lynch who said the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza was the most pressing issue faced by the international community and the union movement needed to play its part in trying to save lives.

Speaking to delegates as a motion calling on Siptu to lobby the Government to implement a range of issues including formal recognition of the State of Palestine was passed by the conference, Mr Lynch said the union movement needed to make its voice heard in support of the civilians currently suffering due to the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

“The biggest issue facing the world at this moment is this conflict and the unions have got to be there in the forefront,” he said.

“There are some people in our movement who are trying to hide away from that but you can’t hide away from history. You have to be on the right side or you will be judged in the future.

“So the whole labour movement and the whole workers’ movement has to stand up for the people of Palestine and stand for peace and justice in that region.”

Mr Lynch said the pay deal currently being balloted on by the membership of his union in Britain, the RMT, was not what they had set out to achieve but was “unconditional” and would avoid compulsory redundancies in the sector at least until the end of next year. Before that, he said, railworkers would be back at the negotiating table in February for talks on a deal to run beyond then.

Omar Barghouti , one of the founders of the BDS movement which calls for a boycott of Israel and divestment by companies operating in the country described events in Gaza as “the world’s first televised genocide,” in his address to the conference.

He described the situation as “an unprecedented dehumanisation of the Palestinian people” and said Ireland needed to do more to halt the current violence.

Support for the people of Gaza was also expressed in a speech on organising in the private sector given by Greg Ennis who won the union’s election to succeed Gerry McCormack, who will retire in the new year, as one of Siptu’s three Deputy general secretaries.

Ethel Buckley and John King were re-elected unopposed to the other two positions.

Mr Ennis said growing the union’s membership in private sector workplaces, where it has become far less of a force over time, would be his top priority.

“Many working people,” he said had been “crucified over the last 12 months or so, by record inflation, extortionate rent and the crippling cost-of-living crisis. We are today experiencing record numbers of employment in Ireland, but our membership levels and consequential Union density continues to slide.

“We must secure an effective mechanism to arrest this decline in the private sector,” he said.