Siptu may seek pay rises before Haddington Road deal expires

The country's largest trade union, Siptu, has indicated that it may press the Government for improvements in pay and conditions for members in the public service prior to the scheduled expiry of the current Haddington Road agreement in mid-2016.

Siptu president Jack O'Connor said yesterday that depending on growth in the economy, it would look for a new agreement with the Government to come into effect before that date.

Locked down
The Government's position has been that the issue of public service pay has been locked down until mid-2016 under the Haddington Road agreement which came into effect last July as a successor to the Croke Park accord.

The deal aimed to generate savings of €300 million last year and €1 billion by 2015 for the Government on its public service pay bill.

However, the agreement, which involved pay cuts for those earning more than €65,000 and longer working hours for most others in the public service, was hugely unpopular with unions. It proved impossible for the public service committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions to negotiate a collective deal with the Government last year after members of many public service unions voted to reject the terms on offer.

Emergency
Later last year individual unions accepted modified proposals drawn up by the Labour Relations Commission but in many cases only after the Government warned that harsher measures could be imposed under financial emergency legislation if a deal was not accepted.

In February Mr O’Connor said that his union was engaged in a major drive for pay increases for members across the private sector in a move to recover ground lost during the economic crisis.

He said there was space to do this without endangering job creation, because unit labour costs had fallen significantly vis-a-vis the country’s major trading partners due to wage stagnation and increased productivity over the past five years. He also argued that increasing pay and consequently purchasing power would grow consumption and stimulate domestic demand.

However, Mr O’Connor’s comments yesterday represented the first occasion on which Siptu had signalled that, depending on economic growth, it would look to improving terms and conditions for its members in the public service ahead of the expiry of Haddington Road in mid-2016.