Public sector pay deal collapses as Siptu votes against proposals

The future of the Croke Park deal has been thrown into doubt after members of Siptu working in the public sector and the INTO voted against the agreement.

They voted by a margin of 53.7 per cent against 46.3 per cent in favour. Siptu has some 63,000 members working in the public service.

The proposed deal is now effectively dead in the water as it cannot be ratified by the public service committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions without the support of the country's biggest union.

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Siptu ballots being counted at Liberty Hall. Photograph: Cyril Byrne/The Irish Times

Opposition parties tonight rounded on the Government as it failed to secure an agreement on public sector pay – with Fianna Fáil branding the collapse an “indictment” of Government strategy.

Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin, gave no indication if the Government would push through pay cuts as threatened during negotiations earlier this year but said the “arithmetic has not changed”.

He said he would have to speak to the Troika representatives on the phone tonight to explain the significance of the vote and will meet them next week.

The cabinet will consider the issue at its weekly meeting next Tuesday but it is not expected that a decision on how to proceed will be made at that stage.

Siptu president Jack O'Connor has warned of a major “mutually destructive confrontation” if the Government moves to introduce legislation to cut public service pay.

Mr O'Connor said given the extent if engagement with members, he believed those who voted "No" were resolved to take industrial action if the Government proceeded unilaterally.

"I do not think there could be very much in people's minds, here in Siptu anyway, that that I'd what the decision would entail."

Mr O' Connor said the Government could choose to go down the consensual route which was still open to it and suggested the introduction of a mini budget to secure the savings required.

Fianna Fáil Public Expenditure spokesperson Seán Fleming said the rejection of the deal by the country’s largest trade union Siptu was “a significant blow” to the Government’s hopes of achieving additional savings.

He said the Government’s efforts to secure a deal from public sector workers were “a mixture of division, bribery and threats”.

Sinn Féin’s Public Expenditure spokesperson Mary Lou McDonald said the collapse of the deal was a “body blow” to the Government’s austerity “agenda”.

People Before Profit’s Richard Boyd Barrett said the vote reflected “the failed policy of this Government” and called on the Labour Party to “resign” from the Coalition.

Primary teachers voted against the deal with 30.5 per cent of INTO members in favour and 69.5 per cent against.

General secretary Sheila Nunan said the result reflects a justified sense of grievance over who was being asked to bear an unfair proportion of the country’s financial adjustment. “The cumulative impact of five years of severe education cuts, the worst effects of which teachers were trying to mitigate for their pupils, also contributed to the outcome,” she said.

Members of the trade union Unite, which has 6,000 members in the public service, have also voted overwhelmingly to reject the deal. They voted by 84 per cent to 16 per cent against the proposed agreement.

Earlier, Impact and the Prison Officers’ Association voted in favour of the deal. Impact’s membership voted 56 to 44 per cent in favour, while the POA voted to accept the deal by 64 per cent in favour and 36 per cent against.

Middle-grade civil servants also strongly backed the proposed new Croke Park agreement in a ballot. Members of the Public Service Executive Union (PSEU) have voted by 61 per cent to 39 per cent in favour of the proposed new deal. There was a 74 per cent turnout in the ballot.

Siptu general president Jack O’Connor said that the vote reflected the sense of grievance among working people and public service workers, in particular.

“They feel that they are shouldering the lion’s share of the post-crisis adjustment while the wealthy are not contributing anything remotely approaching their capacity to do so,” he said.

“We urge the Government not to proceed with legislation to cut the pay of public service workers as it would inevitably precipitate a major confrontation.” Unite regional secretary Jimmy Kelly said the union would not be bound by any decision by Ictu’s public service committee tomorrow.

"If the 'Yes' side is winning by a small number, we will not accept that the 'Yes' side can impose (the deal) on those unions that have rejected the proposals,” he said. "That is the battle that is going to be fought within the trade union movement."

The PSEU was the first of the larger public service unions to support the proposed agreement in a ballot. The union’s general secretary Tom Geraghty said: “After a vigorous debate, members of this union have made a difficult choice and they have voted for certainty over uncertainty. Public servants cannot continue to be expected to carry a disproportionate share of the country’s burden. This has to be the last occasion on which they are targeted.” Two other unions, representing relatively small numbers of craft workers mainly in local authorities and the health service have also backed the deal.