Siptu agrees 3% pay rise with motor industry group

Siptu announced today it had agreed a 3 per cent pay rise for workers in the motor industry.

In a statement, the country's largest union said it had secured the increase for up to 5,000 workers in the motor trade to cover the eight months from May 1st to the end of the year.

The agreement provides for implementation of a 20 per cent productivity bonus scheme agreed under Towards 2016 but not yet universally implemented, the statement added.

The increase brings basic pay to €586.33, or €30,498.16 a year, while the productivity based bonus is worth up to €110 a week and is to be negotiated locally, Siptu said.

“The Society of the Irish Motor Industry [SIMI) agreed the terms . . . in order to avoid its members being hit with large bills for back pay, because the SIMI agreement ran out in April”, Gerry McCormack, Siptu national industrial secretary for the private sector, said today.

“The fact that a major group of employers such as SIMI was prepared to agree such terms suggests that the Ibec agenda in the talks was driven by a hard line minority determined to use adverse economic conditions to put the boot into the most vulnerable sectors of the workforce.”

Siptu president Jack O’Connor added: “The SIMI agreement is important because it provides an example of what can be achieved with reasonably minded employers. It also shows that local bargaining is already beginning to work.

“Local Siptu negotiating committees will be making realistic assessments of what is possible in each company," he said.

“It [the agreement] also underlines how unrealistic were the terms proposed by Ibec last week, which involved pay pauses ranging from six to 12 months, followed by increases worth 2.5 per cent – or nothing at all if employers were feeling pessimistic about the future."

Following the collapse of national pay talks last week, trade unions have warned of possible serious industrial unrest if companies follow advice given by employers' group Ibec and hold off on local bargaining on wages.

Tánaiste Mary Coughlan today insisted talks were ongoing behind the scenes at the highest level to get national pay deal talks back on track.

"There have been discussions between both sides and the government and we hope to continue that between now and the end of August and we would still be very much of the view that a deal would be very important for our economic recovery," she said.

Private sector unions yesterday said they are to seek flat-rate increases of about €30 per week for more than a million workers earning less than the average industrial wage of €38,000.