Saturday working could become standard day in public service

The Government is seeking major new productivity concessions from staff in the public service as part of a new pay deal for State employees.

At talks with unions on Monday it is understood that public service management proposed looking at “outsourcing” or external provision of services.

Sources said management also indicated it wanted to examine Saturday working and connected premium payments with a view to making Saturday a standard working day.

As part of reforms of attendance patterns, clock-in arranagements would be based on bio-metrics such as fingerprinting and iris scans.

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Reforms of rostering arrangements have also been proposed to ensure staff are available to meet demands .

Public service management is also understood to have proposed increasing the existing 45km limit for re-deployment of staff to 60km.

Management also envisaged in its presentation to unions full open recruitment to all grades in the public service

Management has also proposed a standardised pay cycle which would see all grades paid fortnightly in arrears.

Government representatives have also indicated to unions that there will be very limited resources available next year to finance pay rises for 300,000 State employees.

“Of the additional €600 million in current expenditure outlined in Budget 2017, only €200 million remains unallocated due to the carryover of impact of Budget 2017.”

The Government briefing to trade unions said pay would be competing for resources with other priorities such as childcare and social welfare.

Representatives of about 30 different groups of employees as well as top public public service management are meeting at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC).

The talks began earlier with a briefing from officials of the Department of Finance on its projections for the public finances over the coming years.

The director general of the WRC Oonagh Buckley said that apart from the issue of pay, management had indicated that it wanted to talk to unions about pensions and the value of pensions.

She said unions had signalled they would raise the issue of additional working hours and the situation of recent entrants to the public service.

Ms Buckley said the WRC’s conciliation team had cleared its diary except for urgent issues for the next couple of weeks.

It had been envisaged the talks could conclude by the June bank holiday weekend. However some sources have forecast that the timetable could be complicated by the timing of the Fine Gael election campaign.

Bernard Harbor of the Impact trade union said the objective of staff representatives was to secure the fastest possible unwinding of the public service pension levy and the pay cuts that were imposed over recent years.

“We also want to preserve the value of pensions that is on the Government ‘s agenda for these talks.”

He said he believed an agreement could be reached.

“My gut instinct is that both sides want to see an agreement in place. The difficulty is whether we can get the terms they can take to Cabinet to get the blessing of Cabinet and we can take to our members in ballots that have a prospect of being accepted.”

The president of the Garda Representative Association Ciaran O’Neill said his members wanted full pay restoration.

He said his members would not be in favour of any move towards making public servants such as Gardaí – who have faster accruing pensions – pay higher contributions.

He said GRA would not support a separation from general public service pension arrangements.

Ed Byrne, president of the second level teachers' union ASTI said he hoped the new talks would address satisfactorily the issue of new entrants pay.