Delegates to the Public Service Executive Union conference in Waterford voted at the weekend to seek compensation for all members passed over for promotion because they were on a job share. The decision could have serious financial implications for the Government and was taken against the advice of the union's own executive.
In the sharpest debate of the two-day conference, the equality principle prevailed over expediency when the PSEU committed itself on Saturday to pursuing the compensation issue for all members affected since job-sharing was introduced in 1984.
The debate arose out of the Hellen Gerster judgment, delivered by the European Court of Justice last October. Ms Gerster was a job-sharing civil servant in Bavaria, passed over for promotion on seniority grounds. The court ruled that job-sharers could not be discriminated against in this way.
Within the middle-management grades of the Civil Service about half of the 2,000 promotions from executive officer to higher executive officer grade since 1984 have been on the basis of seniority. In the past the predominantly male PSEU membership has been reluctant to champion the seniority rights of job-sharers, who are mainly women.
The PSEU executive had decided to accept the Attorney General's legal advice to the Government last January that the EU Court ruling should apply from the date of its delivery, October 2nd, 1997, with no provision for retrospection.
The PSEU assistant general secretary, Mr Tom McKevitt, said the union had to be realistic about revisiting all promotions since 1984. If even 5 per cent of them had to be overturned it would mean 100 posts were in question.
The official side could either take back the posts from those already promoted and award them to job-sharers, or block future promotions and award them to the job-sharers in question. The Department of Finance might also invoke staff recruitment embargoes, or suppress posts, in order to meet the cost of compensation claims.
He said when a similar case to Ms Gerster's had been brought to the executive by a woman member in 1991, only one branch had supported taking a test case, and 13 had opposed such a move. The union had had little option but to take the stance it did then. Now it was trying to balance the overall interests of members in the new situation.
Mr McKevitt strongly defended the union's equality record, but it cut little ice with a succession of delegates, mainly women, who came to the rostrum to attack the executive's position. Ms Dolores Kavanagh, an equality officer at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, said the PSEU was "becoming more and more reliant on other unions to promote equal rights".
Ms Brenda Collins, from the Land Registry branch, said job-sharers were a small minority being discriminated against. "We are not looking for jam on our bread, but what we are entitled to under EU law," she said.
The delegates, most of whom were male, eventually voted by 103 votes to 77 to reject the executive's recommendations and pursue the issue of compensation for job-sharers.
The PSEU has 7,000 members, most of whom are executive and higher executive officers in the Civil Service. About half the promotions to HEO are based on seniority. The other main union concerned with the job-share issue is the 12,000-strong Civil and Public Service Union, which has already decided to pursue retrospection claims.
At any one time there are about 2,400 civil servants on job share, of whom 1,500 are CPSU members and the majority of the remainder PSEU members. Loss of income, as a result of being passed over for promotion, ranges between £500 and £4,000 a year.
Across the wider public service there are around 3,600 job-sharers, bringing the total to 6,000.
There are no firm figures for the private sector, but it is estimated that there are up to 30,000 job-sharers. Some of these might be eligible to claim compensation for lost promotional opportunities.