The Government's public sector pay policy has suffered a major setback with 10,000 low paid civil servants rejecting pay increases of between 3.4 and 24 per cent over the next three years.
The rejection comes as 15,000 clerical and administrative workers in local authorities and health services begin balloting on a deal worth between 3.7 and 27.7 per cent over the next four years.
Pay disputes involving 26,000 nurses and 40,000 teachers also remain unresolved. There is now a serious prospect that major groups of public sector workers will not know the outcome of their restructuring deals under the Programme for Competitiveness and Work ahead of the special delegate conference of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions on September 26th, to discuss entering talks on a successor to the PCW.
The result of the ballot by the Civil and Public Service Union (CPSU) yesterday did not come as a complete surprise. The terms were strongly criticised by delegates to the union annual conference in May and, for the first time, some members of the executive campaigned against a deal recommended by the executive as a whole.
The final vote was 4,278 against and 3.645 for, a margin of 63 votes. The union executive is meeting on Thursday to discuss its options.
The CPSU can refer the issues to the joint ICTU Government adjudication process set up to resolve the nurses' dispute. Given the narrowness of the rejection, there must be good prospects that an amended version produced through adjudication would be acceptable to the majority.
Nevertheless, the result is a destabilising factor in the overall public sector pay situation. The deal is generally perceived as one of the best offered so far to public sector workers.
It brings the top of the clerical scale up from £230 to £300 a week and gives promotions to 3,300 CPSU members. However, new entrants to the Civil Service and existing staff at the bottom of the pay scale will do relatively poorly out of the deal. The latter group is thought to have voted heavily for rejection.
After the count, the general secretary of the CPSU, Mr John O'Dowd, said, "The executive committee recommended the proposals as an acceptable outcome to the 10 week dispute earlier this year, and they were right in doing so."
He added that the result of the ballot is another example of the difficulties in trying to cope with the new form of productivity bargaining in the public service context.
"The long drawn out nature of the negotiations, which have dragged on from early 1992 until the issue came to a head with the 10 week work to rule this year has not helped matters either."
CPSU members rejected a previous pay offer, and earlier this year carried out a 10 week work to rule. It affected the Department of Agriculture hardest, but also hurt other Government departments and threatened to disrupt the Leaving Cert examinations.
At the annual conference, national officers were attacked strongly from the floor for calling off the action and agreeing to talks when, in the words of one delegate, "we had the Government on the run".