FINE GAEL has proposed a new type of social partnership model under which workers would trade wage restraint, industrial peace and co-operation with reform in return for profit-sharing in the private sector and a reversal of pay cuts over time for staff in the public service.
Speaking at the Industrial Relations News annual conference in Dublin yesterday, the party’s spokesman on enterprise, trade and employment, Leo Varadkar said under such a system the Government could offer greater equality and social progress in areas such as universal health insurance, State-backed pensions and targeted welfare.
He said the previous system of social partnership had served the country well in the 1980s and 1990s, but that it had lost its way during Bertie Ahern’s years as taoiseach. He said that it had become a vehicle for “sharing out the cake among the vested interests”.
He said very little real social progress had been made in access to healthcare, childcare, pensions, equality or welfare reform.
“The opportunity exists for a new government to create a new model of social partnership that is both fit for purpose for the 21st century and more in keeping with the original principles of partnership.
“I envisage a new social contract, a sort of national competitiveness and equality pact, in which workers deliver competitiveness and reform in the public and private sectors in return for greater equality and social progress. This would take the form of universal healthcare, universal State-backed pensions and greater protection from unemployment through a new flexicurity-based welfare system,” he said.
Mr Varadkar said in the private sector Fine Gael would envisage workers offering wage restraint, industrial peace and co-operation with modernisation for profit-sharing and greater workplace involvement.
“In the public sector, I envisage public servants engaging in a total transformation of the public sector in return for a restoration of pay scales over time,” he said.
He said in any new partnership model there should be a broader base of stakeholders including independent small and medium enterprises, the self-employed, consumers and taxpayer advocates as well as users of public services. Mr Varadkar said that if the public sector unions went on strike as part of the campaign against pay cuts, the Government would have to win otherwise it would fall.
In an address to the conference, professor of industrial relations at UCD Bill Roche said that social partnership was dead “even if the pale spectre of social dialogue may play some part in future dealings between the Government, employers and unions”.
Prof Roche said social partnership “was obviously less central to [Taoiseach Brian] Cowen’s political identity and record than to those of his predecessor”.
General secretary designate of Impact Shay Cody said the ingredients were present for a restoration of partnership.
He said there had been consensus among social partners last year that €4 billion in savings had to be made, but that things had fallen apart after the Government decided that all of this should come about through public expenditure cuts.
Ibec director general Danny McCoy said he believed that social partnership could be restored, but the question was how long this would take. He said deflation was the backdrop to the death of social partnership.
Siptu’s divisional organiser Gerry McCormack told the conference that the 60 per cent rebate employers can claim back from the State on statutory redundancy payments was “assisting in the dismissal of workers where other alternatives are not considered”.
“There should be a consideration that employers may not automatically be entitled to the 60 per cent rebate of statutory redundancy entitlement until and unless they can provide verification that they have considered alternatives to redundancy and have had provision for the upskilling and personal development of its employees,” he said.