Unions baulk at Government wish list as public sector talks begin

A week into the talks on a new public-service agreement, some unions are beginning to get fed up that a process they perceived as being about securing pay restoration has so far been dominated by Government demands for work practice changes and reforms.

The issue of pay is not expected to be considered until Monday.

From the start Government representatives flagged that the money available for pay next year was very limited and that public-service management had a whole host of its own demands, including outsourcing, Saturday working and changes to recruitment, rostering and redeployment arrangements.

It is understood that at a session on Friday, where complaints were raised about management demands, the Department of Public Expenditure argued that greater productivity was going to be a quid pro quo for bringing more State employees out from the cuts imposed under financial emergency legislation over recent years.

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The talks will intensify next week when the parties move on to discussing pay and pensions. However, there are deep divisions.

The big-ticket items of pay and public-service pensions were always going to be problematic.

However, some of the productivity and reform proposals put forward by the Government have the potential to derail a new agreement on their own.

A key issue will be outsourcing services, which has been a red line for the unions for a long time.

The existing Lansdowne Road agreement sets out that outsourcing could only be considered after consultation with unions, and even then, the cost of labour would have to be excluded from the business case for such an initiative.

Government representatives last week proposed that these restrictions should be lifted.

Siptu president Jack O’Connor said on Thursday that his union would not recommend any agreement to members that diluted the existing protections against outsourcing.

It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for any new agreement to be ratified by the public-services committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in the absence of the support of Siptu.

Unpaid hours

Another key demand by unions has been the elimination of the requirement on staff to work additional unpaid hours, which was introduced as part of previous agreements. These additional hours are extremely unpopular. However, management argued that the abolition of this requirement could cost more than €600 million – underlining the determination of the Government to retain existing arrangements.

The unions are determined they will not accept any reforms that leave members with less money than they had going into the process. Proposals by management to review existing premium payments for staff working on Saturdays, for example, were quickly dismissed.

The Government is expected to begin showing its hand on pay and pension issues on Monday. The indications are that it will, in particular, seek greater contributions from groups such as gardaí who have faster-accruing pensions than most others.

This is expected to be accompanied by the elimination of the existing public-service pension levy. This, however, generates more than €600 million and the Government is keen to retain a sizable amount.

Unsurprisingly, demands for higher pension contributions will be resisted by gardaí.

The financial briefing given by management that maintained there was only €200 million in “spare” resources available next year from which to fund pay improvements was sobering. The Lansdowne Road accord – which provided for rises of about €1,000 – cost €300 million annually.

The Government analysis would suggest that any new deal – which The Irish Times has previously reported could be of the order of 6 per cent over three years – would have to be back-loaded, with much of the pay improvement coming towards the end.

In such circumstances it remains to be seen whether an overall agreement can be put together and, if so, whether it would be accepted by 300,000 State employees in ballots over the coming months.