THERE will be no agreement with the Government on a successor to the Programme for Competitiveness and Work until outstanding public sector pay claims are dealt with, according to the general secretary of Impact, Mr Peter McLoone.
Delegates to the conference in Ennis listed a number of preconditions to any new agreement. They said it would have to contain specific measures to tackle low pay and unemployment. At the same time, unions would have to reserve their right to take "any form of action" necessary in pursuit of local pay claims.
At one stage yesterday, it looked as if the 600 delegates, who represent 30,000 public service workers, would vote against entering talks on a new agreement. They passed a series of motions condemning the way the Government had handled public sector pay claims under the PCW.
They called for special pay claims "guillotined" by the PCW to be reinstated. When senior union officers and officials complained that some of the claims being pursued would be difficult to attain, Mr Brendan Hayden of Dublin Corporation branch summed up the mood: "I'm very sorry for you if it's extremely difficult to go back and negotiate again, but that's what my members want. That's democracy."
There was loud applause for nurses who were "willing to bite the bullet and go outside the PCW to look for a reward that they deserve", said Mr Stephen Murphy of the Driver Testers' Branch.
However, a motion declaring that "the PCW should be declared a complete failure and no future centralised agreement should be considered" was withdrawn. Instead, delegates opted to call a series of meetings around the State. Union strategy and "a shopping list" could be drawn up in advance of the special delegate conference being held by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in September to consider entering a new national agreement.
Speaker after speaker condemned the Government's attitude and expressed disillusion with the PCW, but the deputy general secretary of Impact, Mr Shay Cody, urged delegates to "vote with your heads, not with your hearts".
He added: "There is nothing wrong with restructuring deals. The problem is that people behind desks in the Department of Finance have no agenda, no clue and are simply obstructive. The way they have handled these non discussions means they will probably have to end up paying out more than if they had negotiated meaningfully from the start."
Any Impact shopping list would have to include local bargaining on pay claims, Mr Cody said, and the public service conciliation and arbitration system would have to be reinstated. Other priorities included tackling low pay, tax reform and unemployment.