PUBLIC SECTOR trade unions will not accept any new social partnership deal for economic recovery with the Government unless it contains guarantees that existing pay and employment levels will be maintained, one of the country’s top union leaders has said.
The chairman of the public sector committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and general secretary of Impact, Peter McLoone, also maintained that any new agreement would have to have firm undertakings to preserve the value of current pension arrangements including the tax-free status of lump sums paid to staff on retirement.
Addressing the annual conference of the Public Service Executive Union (PSEU) – which represents mainly mid-ranking civil servants – in Killarney last night, he said that these were “bottom-line” issues for his and other public sector unions.
The comments represent a significant hardening of the stance of the trade union movement in relation to the new talks following the introduction of the Government’s new ban on recruitment and promotions in the public service and the threat of thousands of job cuts in the Health Service Executive.
In his speech Mr McLoone indicated that the unions would be prepared to consider industrial action to protect jobs, pay, pensions and services irrespective of their involvement in the current social partnership negotiations on a national recovery agreement.
However Mr McLoone also signalled to public service staff that they would have to be prepared to accept change if there was to be an agreement with the Government that provided the required guarantees on jobs, pay and pensions.
He said that achieving such guarantees would be “far from easy” and would require in return for public servants to agree to work harder with far greater efficiency and flexibility.
The Impact leader, who is a key union negotiator in the current social partnership talks with the Government, told the conference that the introduction of the controversial pension levy – which he described as an additional 7.5 per cent tax on top of the measures announced in the recent Budget – had enraged and was continuing to enrage members to an unprecedented degree.
“Since then Government and employers have imposed, or threatened to impose, more changes that will impact on pay, pensions, jobs and public service provision – adding further fuel to the fire”.
“The mood now is for conflict, because the actions of Government and some of the main public service employers suggest that they are determined to provoke disputes as they exploit the recession to force things through without engagement and agreement”, he said.
Mr McLoone said that “just because we are in negotiations with Government, there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that unions will resist such moves, or that we will use any means at our disposal to do so”.
Mr McLoone, who is also the chairman of the State training agency Fás, forecast that 580,000 people could be unemployed by the end of the year.
He warned that public services faced “enormous challenges” over at least the next two years as the economy shrank in size.
“In this environment, the role of public service trade unions must change fundamentally. Our focus must, of necessity, shift to playing an extremely vigorous role in protecting public service provision on the one hand, and the pay, pensions and conditions of the members we represent on the others. Not only are these two objectives absolutely compatible, they are totally interdependent because public services simply can’t exist without the skill, dedication and hard work of those that deliver them”, he said.
Mr McLoone also maintained that public services, and a responsive public sector, would be indispensable to Ireland’s economic recovery. “That does not mean public servants or their unions are arguing that everything can – or should – remain as it is. But the challenge is to find a way of transforming public services – not of destroying them, which is the real objective of many who cynically disguise their motives with the language of reform”, he said.