The position faced by the leaders of the public service unions who renegotiated Croke Park is quite without precedent in Irish industrial relations.
In the deep recession of the 1980s, unions negotiated the first social partnership agreement in 1987. While the rate of unemployment and the burden of public debt were comparable to current levels, the 1987-1990 Programme for National Recovery contained a series of sweeteners that included modest pay rises and reductions in income tax.
What has occurred this week is a root-and-branch renegotiation of the original Croke Park deal, a year earlier than the agreement was to end.
If the agreement is eventually ratified, unions will gain the rather slender carrot of an assurance that this Government will seek no further concessions from public servants. More significant in the thinking of union leaders is their concern to avoid a large stick in the form of legislatively imposed pay cuts. Any law passed to reduce public service pay would likely take less account of issues such as fairness between high and low earners or between new entrants to jobs such as teaching and established professionals.
Throughout its life Croke Park has come in for consistent criticism on the grounds that the concessions sought from public servants were too modest when set against the scale of fiscal consolidation required to stabilise the public finances. Some commentators also pointed out that, with more confidence than warranted by the quality of the evidence adduced, that a public service pay premium existed that needed to be pared back significantly.
While public servants have been spared the involuntary job losses that have been all too common in the commercial sector, it bears emphasis that only minorities of workers in the private sector have been faced with either pay cuts or increases in working time.
Most have borne pay freezes and some have continued to enjoy pay rises. If ratified, the current draft agreement will give the lie to outright attacks on the Croke Park process, as it will mark effectively the third cycle of pay cuts since the onset of the recession and will involve unprecedented increases in working time for most public servants.
A raft of work practice and mobility reforms will also be carried over from Croke Park I. Some of the areas of reform contained in the original agreement, for example, the treatment of under-performance and the territory over which job mobility may be required, will be tightened significantly.
Majority required
Over the weeks ahead attention will focus on whether the deal will be ratified. This is very much an open question. The “big four” unions in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions public services committee – Siptu, Impact, the Public Service Executive Union and the Irish National Teachers Organisation – hold the votes to achieve the majority required to ratify the agreement. However, it is clear from recent statements and pronouncements by these unions that they will not proselytise in favour of the new agreement but rather put the terms before members as the best that can be achieved through negotiation and better than available through industrial action.
Already unions representing about 80,000 members, or nearly one in three public servants, have moved outside the process or have refused to engage in the talks from the start. Even if they submit the agreement to a ballot of their members, it is likely to be rejected.
Still inside the tent for the present but possibly opting to leave it before long are other Ictu unions, possibly the Teachers’ Union of Ireland or the Irish Federation of University Teachers, both of whom rejected the original Croke Park deal, before being enticed back by a combination of sweeteners and possible sanctions. Other unions may also join the ranks of opponents of Croke Park.
Those unions who reject the deal will not view themselves as bound by a majority decision in favour by trade unions overall – if such a decision is forthcoming. This opens the prospect of a trade union movement semi-detached from the process of fiscal consolidation rather than willing to work within the process.
Sabre-rattling
Some opponents of the deal have already made clear that they will pursue an alternative strategy beginning with political lobbying and possibly escalating into industrial action. This should not be viewed as sabre-rattling.
Among the opponents, unions such as the Civil, Public and Services Union and the Irish Nurses and Midwives’ Organisation, have shown themselves in the past to be determined and well organised when pursuing industrial action.
The Garda Representative Association has already pushed out the boundaries of Garda resistance to pay cuts by initiating protests, followed by a “withdrawal of goodwill” – a work-to-rule in all but name. If the deal is ratified by the majority within Ictu, the vista that opens up is of some unions co-operating and others resisting.
This will greatly complicate the day-to-day business of delivering public services and will further strain the already buckled solidarity among trade unions in the public service.
It is not evident that a militant campaign will bear fruit, when undertaken against a Government with the largest majority in the State’s history and well able to afford further attrition from its ranks of TDs. Opponents would also face opposition from a public that soon turns very hostile when public servants exercise their right to take industrial action.
This is the hard-headed conclusion already reached by the trade unions that have negotiated the current deal. Croke Park 1 has rightly been viewed as a significant contributor to industrial relations stability during a period of sharp fiscal contraction. It will be very much harder for Croke Park II to repeat this outcome.
* Bill Roche is professor of industrial relations and human resources at UCD