THE Institute of Personnel and Development (IPD) has called on the Government to get "meaningful talks" on a new pay agreement underway as soon as possible and has warned that a new pay deal is central to Ireland achieving EMU status.
The institute said a new agreement should run for three years and tax reform should be a key part of it. The institute's view, based on a survey of personnel manager members, was outlined at the organisation's annual conference in Galway yesterday.
An overwhelming majority said pay rises should be based on percentage increases. However, there was much less support for the idea of including wider issues, such as a minimum wage, unemployment initiatives, work councils, pensions and training.
Three out of four felt that three years was the optimum period for a new agreement and respondents were split on whether there should be separate deals for the public or private sector.
The findings come just two weeks after the Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, warned that any new deal will have to be tempered by the fact that the current economic boom will not last forever. Mr Bruton said that in some industrial sectors, expectations were "too much beyond reality". He said many benefits would flow from monetary union, but this would only be possible if wages and inflation were kept in line.
IPD director, Mr Michael McDonnell said yesterday that the debate on a new pay agreement so far had "totally ignored" the impact of EMU. He said a new agreement, if it were for three years from 1997, would take Ireland through the proposed date for implementation of EMU.
"IPD members are complaining that the debate has been focusing on the wrong issues," he said. "Ireland has spent a long number of years getting the economy into shape. We could lose it all, if we go back into a free-for-all pay bargaining situation."
Mr McDonnell said a number of industrial disputes had erupted towards the end of the Programme for Competitiveness and Work (PCW) which had not been a feature of the previous national pay agreement, and this was worrying. A new agreement was vital to Ireland which had a small open economy with a large number of people employed in the public sector and which was open to outside competition.
The IPD survey also found that almost 20 per cent of respondents had experienced some form of work stoppage and 98 per cent had been involved in a strike during the lifetime of the PCW.
Mr McDonnell said a new centralised pay agreement would go a long way towards providing the stability required for monetary union.
Commenting on the survey results, IPD chairman Mr Frank Brennan said a number of respondents had said the stability provided by national pay deals had allowed managements and trade unions to deal with change and adaption, which had enhanced their organisations' competitiveness. He added that the sample included a wide cross-section of companies with just over 50 per cent in Irish ownership - both public and private sectors.
The conference which continues today, was told that personnel managers would have to become more proactive, supportive, strategic and flexible. Mr Brennan told delegates that personnel professionals must learn to manage for growth and development, not for maintenance of the old order. "In addition to coping with relentless technological change it is also critically important to develop structures which meet the rapidly changing expectations of customers, society and our coworkers," he said.
Mr Brennan said there were still people who could not embrace change without confrontation and criticised them for being "adversarial dinosaurs". He asked if anyone could seriously believe that dominance by the powerful is a definition of social Justice at work.
"Is industrial warfare - always at the consumer's expense - an appropriate way to share the economic gains of our society?" he asked.
He said such attitudes must be replaced by "new structures more in tune with the modern world".
