Talks on benchmarking begin next week

Talks are to begin next Tuesday between public sector trade union representatives and the Department of Finance over the implementation of new pay awards for 230,000 public servants.

The public services committee of ICTU, the trade union umbrella group, agreed yesterday to begin such talks after the publication on Monday of the report of the Public Service Benchmarking Body.

The report recommends pay increases averaging at 8.9 per cent over 138 public sector grades.

After the meeting, the committee's chairman, Mr Peter McLoone, said it would be impressing on the Government the need to implement the recommendations as soon as possible.

He said he envisaged a time-frame of 2002-2003 for payment of the awards, noting that the teachers' unions had already set a deadline for the Government of next June, a date which coincided with the end of the current national pay agreement, the PPF.

Mr McLoone said a similar position had not been adopted by the committee yesterday. However, he said, "the Government has committed itself to implementing the report as speedily as possible and I don't think anyone is going to accept a definition of that which means three to four years".

He reiterated that while some unions may have difficulties with the report none would be able to do a "solo-run" on it.

"There is no doubt you are going to get reactions and expressions of disappointment, but when people sit down to deal with this, they have to look at it as a complete review of public sector pay, and study it as a single document, within which there won't be any scope for any individual group to improve their situation."

Despite this and similar calls from trade union leaders for a collective response to the report, a number of professional bodies have already expressed provisional opposition to it.

The Prison Officers Association said yesterday that its members were likely to reject their 4 per cent award.

The association's president, Mr Eugene Dennehy, said prison officers were "infuriated" by the report which, he said, appeared to have included overtime and allowances in its recommendations.

"We want to know on what basis were these findings made because it seems they used overtime to downgrade the award to prison officers."

He said prison officers had repeatedly called for additional recruitment as a means of reducing overtime but their calls had fallen on deaf ears. Now, he said, they were being penalised for what he described as "a cheap management tool".

"We are fed up to the teeth with this. In the past 12 months, there were 37,000 cases of forced overtime and it infuriates us when, after demanding the overtime, the management of prisons then go to the media and talk about the cost of it," said Mr Dennehy.

Asked what award prison officers had expected, he said: "We believed it would be substantially ahead of what is offered. When you boil it down, 4 per cent is about €10 a week after tax and PRSI."

Fuelling discontent is the report's recommendation of awards ranging between 10-15 per cent to prison governors.

A similar trend applies to the Garda Síochána, with the report recommending that gardaí receive 5 per cent compared to 16 per cent for superintendents and chief superintendents.

Mr Dennehy said: "It seems like the uniformed foot-soldiers of the State are being downgraded in this report."