Analysis: partnership deal implications:Siptu chief puts down a marker that agreements are not automatic, writes Martin Wall
The negotiation of a new national pay agreement was never going to be easy.
With inflation threatening to erode most of the 10 per cent awarded under the existing deal, some trade union leaders believe that a go-it-alone approach next time would generate more benefits for their members.
However, the move by Aer Lingus to introduce a pay freeze for its 3,000-plus staff, in a move to encourage trade unions to agree to a €20 million cost-saving programme, adds a new and potentially further destabilising element to this mix.
The social partnership process, which many observers believe has played a key role in the country's economic success over recent years, is unlikely to collapse over the Aer Lingus problems alone.
However, the sight of a former State company, in which the Government still has a 25 per cent shareholding, reneging on pay commitments set out in the current national agreement, could sour the mood music for the talks on the next social partnership deal, which were likely to take place in the next few months.
The role of Siptu, the country's largest union representing about 250,000 workers, will be crucial if there is to be a new agreement.
Siptu president Jack O'Connor yesterday said that the Aer Lingus move could have immense implications for social partnership.
He also appeared to signal that the Government and employers' representatives would have to make further efforts if social partnership were to continue.
Speaking after the Aer Lingus announcement, O'Connor stated that all sides who believed in social partnership, including Siptu, were going to have to defend it.
"Otherwise it is gone," he said.
He said that employers and the Government were going "to have to bring their detractors into line and stop looking the other way when people drive a coach and four through it [ the national agreement] on the assumption that good old Siptu will save the day".
O'Connor said that Siptu was sick of carrying the burden of social partnership on its own.
Ironically, in a speech to Siptu's biennial conference in Tralee, just hours before the Aer Lingus announcement yesterday, O'Connor had indicated that a new social partnership agreement was by no means a guaranteed certainty.
He said there was no point in continuing with social partnership unless it could successfully reconcile the objectives of maintaining competitiveness with simultaneously enhancing fairness at work and quality of life.
More specifically, he said that it would be "totally untenable to contemplate continuing if we are still one of the only three countries in the entire EU which refuses to legislate for the principle of equal treatment of agency workers".
O'Connor also urged a moving away from the traditional approach of concentrating resources and energies on employers who did recognise unions "while those who don't get off largely scot-free".
"Simultaneously, and without compromising on fundamental principles, we have to cultivate a more positive strategy towards employers who recognise trade unions and are prepared to maintain reasonable standards of employment, properly funded pension schemes and invest in training. We certainly have to treat them better than those who refuse to recognise unions and flagrantly abuse employees," O'Connor said.
With Siptu representing about 1,800 staff at Aer Lingus it is unlikely to pull down the whole partnership edifice solely over the pay freeze when it did not do so over the health cuts, for example, which affect many more of its members.
However, it does seem to be setting down a marker that the future of the process is not totally secure and that greater action is needed from Government and employers.
The Aer Lingus pay freeze will generate a major industrial relations row, and possibly a dispute in the days and weeks ahead.
However, some senior union figures believe that given the numbers involved, the more definitive pointer to the future of social partnership may be, for example, the report of the benchmarking body, which will affect about 300,000 staff in the public service.