Part-time workers in the public service received another boost with a Labour Court ruling that part-time librarians should receive incremental pay increases on the same basis as full-time staff. This will mean increases of almost 100 per cent for some of the librarians involved. The European Court of Justice decided that every calendar year of service by part-time staff should be treated as a full year when they applied for promotion, unless objective criteria could be found to deny them that right.
IMPACT, the public service union, took a test case for part-time librarians in Mayo and will now be demanding the ruling be applied by other local authorities. Under the ruling, service by part-time employees must be taken into account in calculating wages.
At present, part-time librarians remain at the bottom rate of the scale, no matter how long they have worked for the local authority. In some cases, staff have over 20 years service. IMPACT estimates that a very high proportion of part-time librarians should now move to the top of the scale. This will mean a rise of £4.07p an hour to £9.40p for the staff concerned.