Analysis: Few unions back gardaí and teachers’ strike strategy

There is a striking feature to the ongoing wave of industrial unrest in Ireland – few trade unions have offered support to the strategy of gardaí and teachers in seeking improved pay through strike action.

Last week Unite publicly expressed solidarity with members of the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) in advance of its strike over lower pay rates for recently recruited teachers. Few others have said anything.

The silence boils down to a point that most unions privately – and some publicly – do not accept that any group should be treated as a “special” case for the purposes of additional pay.

Most public service unions believe that given all public servants were dragged as one under the scope of the government’s financial emergency legislation – which underpinned cuts to their terms and conditions – they should all escape it at once.

No union opposes the reversal of the cuts imposed since 2009. But strategically many believe the best way to achieve this is through talks with the Government on a successor to the Lansdowne Road public service pay agreement being put in place earlier than anticipated.

Silent majority

Senior Impact trade union official Bernard Harbour, in an article on the union's website, notes that a large, silent majority of public servants understand that income recovery won't happen overnight.

“This doesn’t fill them with joy. But they know that, just as in the private sector, their employer has to be able to bear the cost of pay increases,” he wrote.

Mr Harbour argues that a large number of public service groups and professions – including many earning far less than teachers and gardaí – could make a rational case for “special treatment”.

He says concessions to “special favours” to any group outside the Lansdowne Road deal would lead to a series of claims, which would come quickly and “be impossible to contain”.

Should the Government give pay rises to any group above the terms of the agreement, the unions know Lansdowne Road would effectively be dead in the water and a pay-related free-for-all would ensue.

The proposals put to gardaí earlier this week by the Government in an attempt to avert the strike – ultimately a €30 million package of incentives – has attracted attention elsewhere and may lead to knock-on claims.

Many union strategists do not see a pay free-for-all across the public service – with one group seeking to out do the next – necessarily being in their interests.

One factor that has to be borne in mind is that Lansdowne Road was not just simply about pay. In addition to the main agreement, unions secured side deals – known as chairman’s notes – to tackle a range of grievances. The Government has refused to publish the details of these.

One side deal secured by Siptu, the country’s largest trade union, placed restrictions on the Government’s scope to out-source services. This offered a protection for many of the lower-paid workers – such as porters, cleaners and caterers – it represents whose employment could be precarious should outsourcing go ahead, and the union will not want to see this disappear.

No deals

The Government has insisted repeatedly that there can be no deals with any public service group outside the terms of the Lansdowne Road accord.

Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe, however, hinted on Tuesday that a successor deal could be put in place earlier than the expected date of autumn 2018.

The importance of this suggestion was that it was made in public rather than that it was made at all. As recently as budget night in October, Mr Donohoe told a press conference that the Government had no plans to change the structure or pace of public service pay restoration.

In reality, many Ministers and union leaders have, in private, long been sceptical of the deal running its full course.

The Government has been highlighting the importance of its new Pay Commission, which is to compare public and private sector pay and Irish pay levels with rates internationally. It is due to report in the second quarter of next year.

However, the commission is an advisory body and will not make recommendations. Instead it will give recommendations to the Government on how the financial emergency legislation should be unwound.

This will prompt talks with the unions, probably sometime after Easter, and the outcome of these will feed into the estimates process ahead of the budget next year, which would then make financial provisions for any increases arising from the updated agreement.

The key question now is when precisely in 2018 will any such increases come into effect.

With a provision of €290 million already made in 2017’s budget for rises agreed under Lansdowne Road, granting anything over and above the accord would represent a major change to the Government’s pay and budget policy.