PRIVATE SECTOR unions will meet on Wednesday to draw up a strategy for lodging claims with individual companies after the collapse of talks on a new national pay agreement in the early hours of Saturday.
The Government is still hoping that the process can be revived. Taoiseach Brian Cowen will meet the social partners at the end of the month if there is any indication that a compromise is still possible.
Remarks yesterday by the general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, David Begg, that the unions would have been prepared to accept a settlement that did not match inflation, as long as lower-paid workers were protected, was taken as a positive sign by the Government and the employers.
Turlough O'Sullivan, the director general of the employers' group Ibec, responded by saying he was encouraged by Mr Begg's remarks but warned that everybody needed to "watch it" in the coming weeks.
The Government has taken comfort from the response of both sides to the breakdown. "There was no blame game afterwards and people now have three and a half weeks to reflect on the position and consider whether they can come back and start talking again," said a government source.
Mr Cowen did not get directly involved in last week's marathon negotiations but met with the union and employer delegations at about 3.30am on Saturday following the breakdown in the talks.
He thanked the parties for their efforts, urged them to reflect on the issues over the month ahead and indicated that he would speak separately to them.
In response to the breakdown the private sector committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) is expected to devise a strategy to identify individual companies with the capacity to pay increases which could set a trend.
It is considered unlikely that the committee will recommend a specific increase to be applied across all sectors but rather may set out guidelines for unions.
Highly-placed sources said yesterday that while pay claims may be lodged in the coming week it was unlikely that there would be any widescale industrial action in the private sector in the short term as procedures for addressing such claims would have to be followed.
Ibec has urged its member companies not to take part in local bargaining with unions until after a meeting sought by the Taoiseach with the social partners on where the process should go from here takes place at the end of August.
Ibec director of industrial relations Brendan McGinty said yesterday that if no national agreement was reached it would be issuing guidelines to members on local bargaining. He said that Ibec believed that a deal could still be concluded.
The national pay deal in the public sector does not expire until next month following the payment of a final 2.5 per cent phase of the deal.
Ictu yesterday said that in claims to be submitted to companies it would seek improvements in employment conditions as well as rises in pay.
Sources said the country's largest union, Siptu, would seek to lodge "realistic" pay claims based on the conditions in individual companies.
Unite, the country's second largest union said it believed workers should receive increases of more than 5 per cent, to provide a real wage rise after inflation.
Mandate, which represents mainly low-paid staff in the retail and bar sectors, said it would be seeking flat-rate increases of about €30 per week. This would represent rises of about 7.5-8 per cent for most of its members.
The finance union IBOA, which represents staff in the banking sector, said that it was looking for increases of 10 per cent over two years.