THE CROKE Park deal on pay and reform in the public service is set to be formally ratified by the Public Services Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Union (Ictu) next week.
Following a decision by members of Impact and Siptu yesterday to back the agreement, unions in favour of the deal will have a significant majority when the issue is decided by a vote at the Public Services Committee on Tuesday.
Members of Siptu in the public service voted in favour of the Croke Park proposals by almost a two-to-one majority, while members of Impact supported the deal by a margin of 77 to 23 per cent.
Impact also suspended industrial action which has been under way in the public service for some months. Taoiseach Brian Cowen last night welcomed the news. Speaking in Ennis, Co Clare, Mr Cowen said: “I believe this agreement provides us with an important opportunity to underpin stability and build for prosperity. I believe that it is now a matter for the public services committee of Ictu who meet next week to decide on the overall outcome.”
Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore said: “I welcome the outcome of the ballot and I welcome the fact that it would appear that it has been agreed, and it is an agreement that if Labour is in Government we will honour and will respect.
“And I have said from the very beginning that there should be a national agreement, that the only way we can have good industrial relations in this country is by good negotiations, and I’ve been absolutely consistent on that from the very beginning,” he told RTÉ’s Six-One News yesterday evening.
Mr Gilmore has previously faced criticism for failing to take a position on the deal.
Under the deal the Government has promised not to cut pay further or to introduce compulsory redundancies in return for co-operation by staff with a wide scale reform programme across the public service.
The agreement also sets out a mechanism for staff to recoup some of the money lost in recent pay cuts from savings to be generated by the reform programme.
The precise nature of how this scheme will work remains to be determined. Siptu president Jack O’Connor said his union’s public sector members had decided “to go with a medium-term strategy which protects their interests in the matters of pay, job security and pensions while providing a framework for the reinstatement of the agreed rates over time”.
He warned that management had to implement the reform programme “in a manner that complied with the principles of the Croke Park proposals which entailed fully respecting the rights and interests of employees”.
Impact general secretary-designate Shay Cody said the Government needed to indicate it would challenge senior public service managers and require them to start acting to work the agreement, deliver real reforms, and involve staff and unions from the start.
The members of seven trade unions, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation; Civil and Public Service Union; Unite; Technical Electrical and Engineering Union; Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI); Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland; and Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT), have voted against the Croke Park deal.
However, because unions with larger membership such as Siptu, Impact and INTO supported the deal, it will be ratified when the Ictu committee meets on Tuesday.
When the deal is formally ratified, the Government will establish an implementation group to oversee the operation of the reform programme and the reimbursement of money to staff. However, a number of issues remain to be clarified.
Some unions such as the TUI and IFUT have said they will not be bound by a majority vote at the Public Services Committee. The TUI believes it is inappropriate for a deal covering conditions of service to be decided by a majority vote of unions.
Mr O’Connor maintained that if by the time the budget for next year is being finalised, the process by which public sector services could be provided at lower cost than would have otherwise been the case has been identified, this would be reflected in allocations for 2011. He said the difference could be made available for distribution to staff.