Senior figures in unions representing more than 200,000 public sector workers have told the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform there is still no basis for engagement on a new national deal after he criticised them on Wednesday for failing to enter talks.
In a letter to Jack Chambers on Thursday, Kevin Callin of Fórsa, Phil Ní Sheaghdha of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), Adrian Kane of Siptu and John Boyle of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) criticised the Minister’s characterisation of their position.
They said there was a wider issue of trust preventing them commencing formal negotiations on a deal that would end the current wave of industrial action across the public service.
“We welcome your indication that the door remains open to negotiations and that engagement is available,” the four officers of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions’ Public Services Committee said in the letter.
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“Naturally we share your view that the issues we have raised are legitimate topics for discussion. We are concerned, however, by the characterisation of unions’ efforts to address cost-of-living pressures at the outset of talks as a ‘precondition’. Our sense of urgency reflects the daily experience of hundreds of thousands of public service workers who continue to face sustained pressure from rising prices.”
They highlighted repeated delays in implementing agreements reached at the Workplace Relations Commission caused by Chambers’ department, the fact some local bargaining payments from the last national agreement are still outstanding and the failure to complete promised unwinding of economic crash-era public service employment-related legislation, all of which are undermining the potential for progress.
On Wednesday, Chambers had said the Government is committed to improving the pay of public servants and remains ready to enter talks on a new deal without precondition.
He suggested a new deal would be good for both sides and pointed to the significant gains made by the lowest-paid civil and public service workers under the last one. He insisted, however, any successor deal has “to be safe, sustainable and affordable within our wider fiscal parameters and I think everybody understands that”.
Members of Fórsa, Siptu and INMO began a work-to-rule across large portions of the civil and public service on Wednesday. Two of the teachers’ unions, the INTO and Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland, will start similar action on Monday. The Teachers’ Union of Ireland is expected to announce the result of its ballot on action on Friday.
All of these unions, along with Unite and a number of smaller ones, are scheduled to stage a one-day stoppage on October 14th.
On Thursday, the Psychiatric Nurses Association, which is not affiliated to the congress, said its members were commencing industrial action too.
