The slow bicycle race towards a successor to Partnership 2000 decelerated significantly over the weekend. While increasing consensus was emerging on the overall shape of the deal, pay proved, as usual, the most contentious issue. The Irish Business and Employers' Confederation threw an extra layer of velcro on the track at the weekend with its demand that there must be "cost-absorption measures" built into national pay round increases.
In past agreements, increased productivity, or other cost reduction measures, were reserved for local bargaining clauses negotiated on top of across-the-board payments. This counter-attack by the employers appears to have been provoked by the success of the unions in pushing them from 9 per cent to 15 per cent on across-theboard increases, and simultaneously continuing to push for the national minimum wage to come in higher than £4.40 an hour.
Taken in conjunction with tax cuts provided for in the December Budget, IBEC is concerned at the effect a 10 per cent-plus increase in take-home pay this year could have on inflation. "The low pay agenda is being dealt with very comprehensively by the proposed national minimum wage and by the willingness of the Government to make provision for low pay in the Finance Bill," says IBEC's director of employee relations, Mr Tur lough O'Sullivan. "We do not buy into the philosophy that low-paid jobs can be sacrificed."
IBEC is also worried at the destabilising effect a high national minimum wage will have on wage rates generally and about the ability of the ICTU to contain that wage pressure. It can point to the success of groups such as nurses in breaching public service pay guidelines and building workers in the private sector.
Deliverability is certainly a concern for the Construction Industry Federation, says its director-general, Mr Liam Kelleher. However, he adds that his members have no problem with locally-based productivity bargaining.
The SIPTU general secretary, Mr John McDonnell, has members in virtually every sector. Like the CIF, he has no problems with local bargaining or local gain-sharing agreements, but he says efforts to introduce cost-absorption measures into national across-the-board increases would be a complete reversal of past agreements.
He also has little time for IBEC's plea on behalf of small firms and the national minimum wage. As a trade union official who cut his teeth in small-town Ireland, he says: "McDonald's in country places have to pay the same rates as in the cities. It is a fact of life employers are paying more than £4.40 an hour to keep people - people who are entitled to a decent wage."
Even union leaders representing fairly high earners, such as Mr Con Scanlon, of the Communications Workers' Union, has no problems pushing the interests of the low-paid. "We favour a floor and a percentage increase after that, that would give reasonable gains to everyone," he said. "We are also very committed to seeing the minimum wage introduced at a decent rate."
The IMPACT general secretary, Mr Peter McLoone, whose relatively well-paid members in the public service began a campaign two years ago for the new pay deal to be weighted towards the low-paid, remained convinced that a combination of a high national minimum wage, tax reforms and flat rate increases were the key to a new agreement.
The community and voluntary sectors are at one with the trade unions on this issue. However, they are also seeking an investment package in social welfare payments, capital investment programmes in the Republic's 25 poorest communities and monitoring of income adequacy measures.
It may be that the final agreement will see increases in the national minimum wage phased in over its lifetime. A flat-rate pay increase is likely to be somewhere between the IBEC floor of £9 a week and the ICTU ceiling of £15. Fifteen per cent over three years will be an attractive package, but "cost-absorption measures" could still stop the cyclists in their tracks.