Unions to seek ‘very significant’ pay rises for all workers in talks next week

Trade unions are to seek “very significant” pay rises for both public and private sector workers when formal talks on the matter begin with the Government next week, Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) president Kevin Callinan said on Sunday.

Mr Callinan said “there is no difference” if people are working in the public or private sector insofar as pay rises are called for across the board in order to alleviate deficits built up during the Covid-19 crisis.

He said the talks would take place in the context of “reviewing” the previous agreement, which, he said, would not have been agreed had trade unions had foreknowledge of events to come.

“What we are really saying is that if we had known then what we know now in terms of inflation, the performance of the public finances, which have improved immeasurably beyond where they were in the Covid period before we had vaccines, then we would have been doing a different type of pay deal for the two years involved,” he said.

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Speaking on RTÉ's This Week, Mr Callinan said the “ball is in the Government’s court” and that he would wait to see “to what extent they are prepared to prioritise low wage earners and middle income earners”.

“The Minister has indicated he wants to look at pay for next year as well,” he said. “We are open to that. The reality is that both in private and public sector we are going to have to try protect members’ living standards and the way we do that is by wage bargaining.

“We certainly want to see a very significant increase for this year to make up for the deficit this year and last year, and obviously we will have to look at next year as well.”

Mr Callinan would not be drawn on whether unions would demand increases in line with inflation.

“We haven’t expressed it that way,” he said. “We do need to hear from the Government on Thursday. The ball is in their court. We need to know how they want to structure this. How they see the balance between spending this year and spending next year.”

He added that suggestions from Tánaiste Leo Varadkar that the “squeezed middle” should be in line for tax cuts in the next budget were “completely wrong”.

“It is hard to credit that in a country where the population has grown, we have more people working than ever before, where we have obvious deficits in our public services, that we would hear politicians emphasising tax cuts as the solution to this,” he said.

“That in our view is completely the wrong way to approach this. We need to improve our public services, improve the financial supports to people.

“We’re looking for pay rises for all workers, and there is no difference in relation to this issue between public and private sector workers.”