Women workers are the main losers in the findings of the benchmarking report, writes Padraig Yeates, Industry and Employment Correspondent
Cynics expected the report of the benchmarking body to be a case of the fudge catching up with the fudgers when it was published yesterday. However, its chairman, Mr Justice Quirke, kept his promise that the body would do its work fairly and without fear or favour.
If the end-product failed to meet the expectations of many public service workers, such as clerical staff, engineers and nurses, the reason was that private sector pay rates for most comparable workers were not as good as anecdotal evidence had suggested.
An even more fundamental factor is that civil service clerical workers and nurses are still overwhelmingly female, and the low pay awards they have received from the body reflect the relatively lower pay of women across the economy, including the private sector.
If clerical civil servants were handicapped by having low-paid comparators in the private sector, nurses suffered from having no decent comparators at all, whereas many paramedics could be compared with colleagues who had departed the public health system in favour of private practice. Dentists and doctors benefited from a similar situation.
Ironically nurses, who had expected the benchmarking process to close the gap between themselves and paramedics, have seen it widen. Given the dramatic threats of industrial action made by some nursing leaders earlier this year that could prove ominous. But the Nursing Alliance restricted itself yesterday to expressing disappointment rather than outrage at the benchmarking body's findings.
The fact is that nurses did better than any other large group in the public service out of pay disputes of 1997 and 1999. It was the fall-out from those disputes that led to the setting up of the benchmarking body through the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness.
The idea was that the body would decide public service pay on the basis of private sector comparators in a way that would avoid the otherwise inevitable avalanche of relativity-based knock-on pay claims that followed a successful claim by powerful groups of public service workers.
The nursing unions also have the consolation that management and supervisory grades have done relatively well out of benchmarking, as have senior staff across a wide range of public service occupations.
Such a consolation prize is not available to the other main loser from the exercise, the Civil and Public Service Union.
Unlike the nurses the CPSU represents some of the lowest grades in the public service and suffered from comparison with a private sector that has tended to reward management more handsomely than other ranks in recent years as well as continue to discriminate against women.
It is quite possible that delegates to the special conferences called by the Irish Nurses' Organisation and the CPSU next September will reject the benchmarking report, with potentially serious results for the process.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions has managed to live quite comfortably with the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland, outside the benchmarking process, but if the INO and CPSU joined them, not only benchmarking but the prospects of a successor to the PPF would be seriously undermined.
Fortunately the summer holiday months intervene, and public service workers disappointed at the outcome of the benchmarking process have time to reflect that even pay awards below the 8.9 per cent average are better than nothing.
At present the benchmarking report will dovetail into talks on a successor to the PPF in the autumn. ICTU is holding a special delegate conference on September 17th to decide whether or not to enter those talks.
The biggest public service unions, SIPTU and IMPACT, will almost certainly recommend in favour, as well as negotiating implementation of the benchmarking report as part of the overall process.
The small but influential Public Services Executive Union is likely to adopt a similarly positive attitude.
The Government is committed to paying 25 per cent of the benchmarking award quickly, if the unions indicate a willingness to accept it. Talks on the phasing in of the remaining 75 per cent would be part of the negotiations on a new agreement, which would probably begin in October.
This would be linked with more specific commitments to increased co-operation with change in the public service than was provided for in previous agreements.
The public services committee of ICTU has no problem with that and it meets tomorrow to seek a quick meeting with the Department of Finance.
While constituent unions have still to decide individually their attitude to the report, the committee's chairman, Mr Peter McLoone, pointed out yesterday that agreement by the Government to rapid phasing in of the pay increases would make the package more attractive, especially to those who currently feel hard done by.
Past experience supports his view. The last attempt at reforming public service pay through the "restructuring process" took almost a decade to complete. Far from breaking relativities it created frustration and bred militancy.
Without naming names Mr McLoone left public service workers who were discontented with the outcome in no doubt of the consequences if they followed the ASTI into the wilderness.
The new report is light years ahead of any previous attempt at regulating public service pay rates. It involves the most comprehensive and detailed examination of rates across the private and public sectors ever undertaken and could provide a model for the future.
Ironically the fact that the benchmarking body was dissolved on completion of the report and has no appeals mechanism has enhanced the value of its report. The outcome cannot be tweaked, or compromised.