Public sector pay deal must provide more flexibility and address inflation, says Ictu president

The next national public sector pay agreement must deliver pay rises that match the rate of inflation while also providing the flexibility required to address outstanding issues and encourage recruitment, Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) president Kevin Callinan has said.

The Fórsa general secretary, who chairs Ictu’s public services committee, gave the clearest indication yet of the union side’s objectives in the forthcoming talks on a new public pay deal while speaking at the Industrial Relations News annual conference at Belfield.

He suggested his union needed to deliver increases in line with inflation if it was to remain “relevant” to its members but also said public sector employers need to be able to attract Irish school leavers and graduates if it was going to address “worrying” levels of reliance on migrant workers.

“People I believe, not just public service workers but all workers, want to see unions standing up to achieve measures that deal with the cost of living’s effect on them,” he said.

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“In the public service, for that to be done in a way that secures the stability we need over the medium term it’s going to have to involve a local bargaining element.

He said that while Ireland produces high quality school leavers and graduates, many were choosing to leave Ireland with the result that key public services were ever more reliant on skilled workers from overseas.

“Unless we have more flexibility on pay bargaining I don’t think we are going to be able to deal with those issues over the medium to long term.”

Beyond that, he added, there were issues affecting sections and grades across the public service that couldn’t be addressed because of a prohibition under recent pay agreements on cost increasing claims.

“If we’re serious about reaching an agreement that can endure over an extended period of time, into the medium term, it’s important that there is an ability to deal with issues in a different way than has been the case before. It’s simply not going to be an option to have a complete ban on cost increasing claims.

“Let me completely clear, that will not work in the current environment. So we have to see if we can conceive something that meets the aspiration of workers while at the same time provides Government and employers with some of the things that they will be seeking.”

Prominent among those workers’ aspirations he said, were pay rises that address the impact of inflation.

“Why wouldn’t workers expect, in the world in which we are living now, that they would see real increases rather than negative increases. It doesn’t make any sense. The trick is to find a way to do it in such a way that takes account of the concerns around corporation tax and so on and so forth.”

He said exploratory talks have been continuing with regard to the formulation of the new agreement but that the most likely time for more substantive negotiations will be after the summer at this stage. Given that, he observed, clarity on what sort of pay rises would be sought is impossible as the precise level of inflation will be a factor as will Government’s decisions on financial supports to households.

“I don’t think it’s rocket science,” he said. “I think stability depends on perception of fairness. In the public service we’ve had a set of (recent) agreements that were mainly about concession bargaining and more latterly about restoration but that is not the future.

“We could end up in a situation like the one in Britain where we have a whole set of disputes or we can reach an agreement that delivers on the aspirations of workers and delivers a certain amount of cost certainty from the Government’s point of view [but] I think if we are going to see the social cohesion that has to been a strength [of Irish society in recent times then] there’s going to have to be a major shift on this occasion.

Mr Callinan also said he would like to see an expanded role for the Workplace Relations Commission and Labour Court in dealing with disputes relating to public employment.