A backlog of more than 50,000 unprocessed passports is expected to be cleared after the Civil, Public and Services Union (CPSU) lifted an overtime ban put in place four weeks ago as part of the industrial action in protest at Government pay cuts.
The decision to lift the overtime ban will allow staff at the Passport Office to carry out additional work on overtime to deal with the backlog of applications which built up over the industrial action.
Speaking this morning on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, CPSU general secretary Blair Horan said the removal of overtime would make a huge difference in speeding up the processing of passport applications.
Other more limited forms of industrial action, such as a ban on carrying out work associated with vacant posts or in assisting with representations from TDs or in the compilation of answers to parliamentary questions, will continue.
Mr Horan said the CPSU executive had decided to consult the union’s branches on whether it should recommend support for the public service pay and reform deal agreed with the Government this week.
“My executive didn’t make a decision yesterday; it decided to defer the decision until Monday April 12th. It was very clear from the discussion yesterday that this deal is deeply unpopular with members,” he told RTÉ.
Mr Horan said the report he made to the executive is that a union of 14,000 members cannot determine the overall shape of the deal representing 300,000 public servants.
“At the end of the day, if CPSU rejects this, that’s not going to determine the overall shape of the deal. It will be important what unions like Siptu and Impact and indeed all of the teachers unions ultimately decide,” he added.
The country’s largest public sector union, Impact, said yesterday that its industrial action would continue until the proposed new deal was considered at a meeting of its executive next week.
Siptu said a decision on the industrial action being carried out by its members would be made “sooner rather than later”.
The union Unite is to hold a special consultative meeting with officials and its public service members on Friday next week to consider the proposed new deal.
The chairman of the talks process which led to last Tuesday’s deal, Kieran Mulvey, has asked the unions to call off their industrial action.
All public sector unions will now ballot members on the proposed new agreement.
Under the deal the Government has given a commitment that there will be no further cuts in public sector pay until 2014 at least in return for union support for an extensive programme of reform in the public service.
The deal does not contain specific guarantees on reversing pay cuts that were put in place in the budget last December.
However, there will be a review of public sector pay in spring of next year and in each subsequent year. These will take account of “sustainable” savings generated as a result of the implementation of the reform programme, and determine whether there is any scope for the reimbursement of pay cuts.
There is also a commitment that there will be no compulsory redundancies in the public service provided that flexible redeployment measures are put in place.
The new deal says the numbers employed in the public service will be reduced significantly in the years ahead. To maintain the delivery of public services at the same time as reducing numbers “efficiencies will need to be maximised and productivity in the use of resources greatly increased through revised work practices and other initiatives”.
It also says the Government will move to dismantle barriers to the development of a unified public service labour market, and to the greatest extent possible there will be standardised terms and conditions of employment.
It also says flexible redeployment of staff is necessary to sustain the commitment to job security within the public service.
