New public pay talks need to start within year, says Impact

Talks with the Government on a new public service pay deal will need to begin within the next 12 months, the country’s largest public service trade union has urged.

In an address to the opening session of the biennial conference of the Impact trade union in Killarney on Wednesday, its president Jerry King said the scale and pace of the economic recovery, and the continuing likelihood of higher- than-expected growth, meant it was reasonable for unions to seek earlier engagement on pay restoration.

He told the 650 delegates that “circumstances were evolving in the world”.

“It is becoming clear that the talks for a successor to the Lansdowne Road agreement need to be accelerated.”

The Lansdowne Road accord on public service pay was negotiated last year, came into effect in January and is scheduled to run until September 2018.

Industrial peace

Mr King said if cohesion and industrial peace was to be maintained in the public service, financial emergency legislation, which underpinned various cuts to the terms and conditions of staff over recent years, would also need to be unwound at a faster pace.

He called for accelerated pay restoration for all public servants.

Mr King said there would be “nothing new” about bringing forward talks on a successor to the Lansdowne Road deal.

“The discussions that led to the Haddington Road agreement took place in the context of lower-than-expected growth, while talks to negotiate the Lansdowne Road Agreement took place before the previous agreement ended,” he said.

Mr King also said the Civil Service and broader public sector needed “repopulating, and needs it now”.

He said services were stretched to breaking point and that recruitment needed to begin immediately.

“The legacy of the moratorium on public sector recruitment means that there is more pressure now on service delivery than ever before.

“The population continues to increase while there are workplaces where the youngest person is over 40 years old. A generation has been lost. There is stagnation.”

Decent pay

Mr King said decent work and decent pay were crucial to Ireland’s economic recovery.

“If small and medium enterprises are to prosper in this recovery, decent work and decent pay will ensure that they have a confident, growing customer base.”

He criticised what he described as a growing trend of precarious employment through the use of “if and when” contracts.

“So-called precarious employment is no employment at all. It’s taking advantage of the young and the vulnerable and the less educated - the very people that responsible employers, committed trade unionists, and an ethical Government should have as our first priority to protect.

“Precarious employment is a tool of inequality, and we must oppose it. When we oppose outsourcing and privatisation we are staunching the spread of precarious employment,” he said.