The country’s second largest trade union, Unite, has said it will be seeking pay increases of in excess of 5 per cent as part of the current talks on a new social partnership agreement.
Entering the talks in Government Buildings this afternoon, Unite regional secretary Jimmy Kelly said anything less would represent a pay cut for workers given the current rate of inflation.
However employers said such increases were “completely unrealistic” and would feed inflation.
Turlough O’Sullivan, director general of employers’ group Ibec said that it had already argued that in the current circumstances that the economy needed a pay pause in the public sector
“As far as the private sector is concerned there is a very wide divergence of reality. Some companies, many companies are in pretty dire straits and could easily justify a pay pause others could probably afford a fairly modest or moderate increase.
What we have to do is see if we can find a model within a national partnership agreement that addresses hat divergence that is there within the private sector," he said.
Asking if employers were moving away from the one-size-fits-all approach to social partnership agreements, Mr O'Sullivan said that the parties had already moved away from such a position in the current deal, Towards 2016.
"In the first phase of Towards 2016 there were significant opportunities for firms to look for cost offsetting measures, on-going change or to plead inability to pay. All those possibilities are already in the current model so I thing we just need to broaden it and make it more effective," he said.
Siptu president Jack O’Connor said that unions had to protect both living standards and jobs in the current talks.
“That entails tackling inflation in an imaginative way and not simply waiting for workers to carry the can for it," he said.