Is the threat to living standards caused by the sharp rise in inflation resolvable by those who signed up to social partnership? Can a compact which trades stability for fairness and a new balance of power in decisions which affect our lives at work and at home survive the undermining by those who are signed up only to how much they can grab for themselves?

This is the obvious challenge of the moment but it is instructive and worrying that the reported angst is largely directed at the potential threat to economic stability and competitiveness rather than the realities of increasing inequalities and reductions in living standards, especially for the most vulnerable.

The test is not just whether the powerful in this equation are prepared to control grasp and greed but whether they are really committed to a reshaping of power in which prosperity and fairness are underpinned by a culture of rights and respect. The response to the current problem will help to reveal whether what is really on offer is an easy courtesy of inclusive dialogue in the workplace or public policy up to the point of power, or the difficult unease of the actual sharing of that power to effect agreed change. Those who need that change the most have the right to ask whether they are the shock absorbers for stability or real players in directing and benefiting from change.

Many low-paid workers in the private sector are working in the service areas where soaring profit margins are one of the causes of the current inflation. They heard those very employers refuse to increase immediately the minimum wage to £5 and also successfully resist a high base rate in the negotiations, which would have made the scandal of low pay a matter of history.

They saw those employers shift the burden to Government to tackle low pay through taxation and welfare policy. They now see many of those employers undermine without compunction Government policy on inflation and the living standards of their own workers. Low-paid workers in the public services, such as home helps, carers for the vulnerable and ill, those who do the least glamorous, unseen and essential jobs, willingly carry huge social responsibility directly inverse to what is in their pay packets. Will benchmarking change that reality or simply reorder it to accommodate the loudest voices and present problems?

Government and employers are bewailing a "tight" labour market. At the same time they are putting on the long finger agreeing a per cent or so of profit margin or public finance receipts for the real funding of flexible parental leave, increased maternity leave, carers' support and substantial and structural State and employer-funded childcare provision. This is doing a very good job of convincing not just stressed-out women but all working families that the commitment to "family-friendly" policies stops at the point of real cost and change. The discrimination and resistance to flexible part-time working with rights simply reinforces that lived experience.

Where is their voice really being heard? It is the question being asked by all of those who are currently living these realities. They are experiencing access to the labour market and family responsibilities as a nightmare obstacle race caused by a structure of a labour market which demands flexibility but will not pay for it or really change its way of doing business.

Having, for example, a real voice in the current housing debate would mean that proposals to regulate the private rented sector to meet the needs and rights of the low-paid and not so lower-paid, who have been squeezed out of the labour market, would be central, as would be issues of access to waiting lists, tenants' rights and estate management in public housing. The debate is conducted then not just to stabilise the value of property but the value of a home.

Those who live in the economic and social margins are there not by virtue of defective genes but by defective decision-making. A culture of rights and respect means bringing them in from the cold with rights and access to resources, instead of treating them as awkward and potentially dangerous problems.

It should be recalled that the idea of agreements among the social partners emerged from the genuine economic crises of the 1980s caused not by the irresponsibility of the poor but the powerful. The idea of partnership has matured. In the discussions leading up to the signing of the Partnership for Prosperity and Fairness we in the trade union movement set the shape for a new relationship between work and home. We agreed to target those who needed resources most in order to produce tangible impact on social inequality. As a movement we strongly supported those groups directly representing the socially excluded. We recognised that the process was a dynamic one and built arrangements into the agreement to protect the commitments we gave to our members and the other partners. In light of changing realities we are now calling those in.

At our forthcoming meeting with the Taoiseach we again will present our proposals for practical steps to protect and implement the commitments entered into in the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness. We need to come out of that meeting with the confidence not just that we have been listened to but that we are real partners in managing and implementing change. Those who need that change the most have the right to demand from all of us where they really stand. They deserve from all of us a hard commitment that they will be at the heart of the process and that they are part of shaping it.

Inez McCormack is president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.