Public sector pay awards do not appear to be dependent on any commitments to change, so we could end up paying more while services fail to improve

NOT FINISHED YET !!!!Hats off to the public sector unions. They have secured pay increases averaging 8.9 per cent for their members under the benchmarking process in return for a string of vague commitments to co-operate with modernisation and change.

At a time when the Exchequer finances are tight, money will have to be raised - or cut - from other areas to fund pay increases for which, in the case of the civil service at least, little is being asked in return.

The latest phase of the "partnership" process - which has done the State some service over the past 15 years - is now best summed up in Joe O'Toole's statement in the Senate debate on this year's Budget: "The ATM machine is nicely stacked up. I look forward to that spitting out money in all directions, including the Members of the Oireachtas, in a short period."

Unfortunately, to fill up the benchmarking ATM, spending on all other areas will suffer and new money will have to be raised through tax increases and other charges on the public.

And for what? This week the Department of Finance published the "action plans" outlining what 30,000 civil servants would be asked to do in return for their benchmarking payments, which are, in general, above the average of a 8.9 per cent annual increase across the public service. The documents, available on the Department's website, contain a range of aspirations to modernisation and change, to delivering value for money, to producing customer charters and so on.

They all follow a common approach, saying what is to be done under a range of headings from customer service, to productivity, regulatory improvements and new hiring practices. But the detail is mainly a rehash of programmes and practices already underway, combined with unspecific promises to do things better. Typically the programmes talk about investments in new technology systems, promise to press ahead with some kind of performance management and to continue moves to gradually free up recruitment and promotion systems.

But look for real concrete commitments to change, or clear targets for improved performance, and they are not there. In tricky areas, such as changed promotion practices, more talks are promised before any change. There is no sense at all reading the documents of a strategic approach to ensuring the kind of major change which should be delivered in return for such sizeable awards.

So much for the repeated statements we have heard from Minister of Finance, Mr McCreevy, about real productivity improvements being essential in return for 75 per cent of the awards. The only firm commitment is to avoid industrial action - is the €1.1 billion benchmarking awards just an expensive industrial peace clause?

The blame cannot be attributed to the performance verification groups, established to oversee the drawing up of the action plans and their implementation. These groups have a very limited ability to influence the process. After all, the money is already allocated for each grade and the outline of what they are to do in return is set down in the text of the new national agreement. The way the whole process happened is a lesson in how not to get value for money. By outlining the money to be paid to each public servant, without any detail of the quid pro quo, the ( completely opaque ) benchmarking body's report set an inevitable process in train. By the time it came to negotiating the new national agreement, all that was done was to write in some aspirational guff about what was to be delivered in return. This is why the action plans for the 200,000 plus workers in the wider public service - such as nurses, teachers local authorities workers etc -will be just as vague and unspecific as those for the civil service.

A logical approach would, of course, have started from the other end of the process - the customer. It would have asked what kind of services do we want to deliver to the public and how are we to organise ourselves to deliver them? And then negotiated the pay increases in return for these changes.

If real change was not the goal from the start, then the benchmarking body should have been asked what rates do public servants deserve for the work they do, taking into account their job security and generous pensions. No doubt the average rises would have been much lower. Instead we are left with the worst of both worlds - high pay awards without the productivity gains to match.

The civil service has changed and improved considerably over recent years. A Government-sponsored PA Study, published last year, said that the 1994 Strategic Managment Initiative and the 1996 Better Government Programme had led to considerable progress, though much more remained to be done in areas such as human resource management, information technology and financial management. The OECD has made similar recommendations.

The benchmarking process was an opportunity to push this agenda forward and to achieve what management consultants like to call a "step change" - a major improvement. Surely it would not have been unreasonable, for example, for the Government to insist that, if civil servants wanted pay awards benchmarked to the private sector, then open recruitment and merit-based promotion would be introduced in all areas immediately. Instead we are treated to gobbledegook about time-frames for further negotiations in these areas.

And what about job numbers? The Government has said it wants to hold public service numbers steady this year and reduce them by 5,000 over the next three years. The plans could have contained specific employment targets for each department and commitments by civil servants to deliver existing or improved services, requiring considerable flexibility in areas such as redeployment

Instead, we will pay more money and could have worse, not better, public services. The Government will have to try to control numbers if the public pay bill is not to explode, but there is nothing in the documents that points the way to significantly greater productivity for those who remain. So the result will be gradual disimprovements in many services and higher charges to the public and business.

Local authorities will have to push up commercial rates to pay for increases for their staff. We will all pay the cost of higher civil service pay through general tax increases on Budget day.

The truth of the matter is that the benchmarking process was always intended as a way to pay public servants more - to give them their share of the fruits of what was then a rapidly growing economy. A few years ago, when the idea was dreamed up, public servants were looking enviously at their private sector peers. Now the position has reversed and the pay levels, job guarantees and rock solid pensions of the public service look very attractive.

The private sector is now under increasing pressure and workforces are being forced to adapt as businesses are restructured. Unfortunately the partnership/ benchmarking process has completely failed to take account of this new business environment and has simply not delivered in terms of introducing a new level of adaptability and change into the public service. The ATM machine may indeed be well loaded, but the price will be evident on Budget day and in the disenchantment with the whole partnership process which wil follow.