Pay claims in line with inflation not unreasonable, says Siptu

Siptu will be unapologetic in seeking pay rises that are in line with inflation from those companies that can afford them over the coming months, delegates to the union’s biennial conference in Sligo have been told.

Warning the union’s members that the crisis in Ukraine will continue to drive prices for many commodities steeply upwards with obvious implications for the cost of living, deputy general secretary Gerry McCormack said that Siptu would operate on the basis it always has: that claims intended to protect members’ incomes would be pursued where the company could pay the increases sought.

“We had the Minister [Leo Varadkar] a number of weeks ago talking about inflation. And . . . he made the remark that trade unions should not be seeking pay increases up to the level of inflation, that that was going to drive inflation. The general secretary said yesterday that that is not true and he’s right, it’s not true.

“When our officials in the 2,500 companies where we represent members go in and negotiate a pay increase with that employer part of how they come to that agreement is based on the profitability of the company, the ability of the company to pay. That will continue. So what we are asking for is pay agreements where the companies can afford them to the level of inflation, which could be 8.5 per cent.

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“We are not going to apologise to Leo Varadkar or anybody else for doing that. We are going to protect our members’ pay where we can and we are not going to made feel sorry in any way for doing it.

“Isn’t it interesting that companies, when they feel inflationary pressures, increase their prices in order to retain profitability but when employees of the same companies want to hold on to what they have in terms of living standards, it’s a different story. It’s utter nonsense.”

He said that among the measures the union want to see from Government to help the situation is the doubling of the limit on the amount companies can give their employees tax free in the form of a retail voucher from €500 to €1,000 per annum.

Loss of members

Mr McCormack said the union’s private sector membership has been hit by the pandemic with 10,000 fewer paying subscriptions now than before Covid-19 struck. He said at one stage 35,000 members had been lost.

“In the private sector 95 per cent of our members worked during Covid-19 in the most extreme circumstances and put their own lives at risk every day of the week. Most of the other members were laid off. They received the PUP payment or a wage subsidy. Many of them have never got their jobs back we have people who lost jobs during that those two years who have never worked a day since then.”

He called for renewed efforts by Government to get people back to work and said the union needed to recover the numbers lost during the pandemic and then push for a return to the 200,000 or so members it had prior to the economic crash of more than a decade ago.

“That is not about the numbers, though,” he said. “It is about power because when we are losing members, we are losing power.