TRADE UNIONS have agreed not to escalate industrial action over public service pay cuts to include strikes and rolling stoppages.
However, it is likely that a four-week overtime ban planned to begin in some areas of the public service on Monday will go ahead and that the current phase of low-key action, which includes bans on answering phones and the closure of public offices at lunchtime, is to continue.
Government officials and public service union leaders met at the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) yesterday in an attempt to pave the way for a resolution of the dispute, which has intensified since the pay cuts were announced in the budget.
It is understood that during the meeting the LRC asked and the unions agreed not to continue with the proposed escalation of their industrial action.
The LRC is also understood to have asked the unions to suspend the current phase of action, but the union leaders declined because two sets of talks with the Government had collapsed in the past year and that if the current talks also failed they would lose credibility with their members.
Speaking following the meeting, Kieran Mulvey, chief executive of the LRC, said the parties had agreed to engage in a two-week period of “intensive negotiations” aimed at reaching a conclusion to the outstanding issues from Monday afternoon.
Mr Mulvey said both parties appeared committed to doing business and that he hoped the negotiations, which he and the LRC’s director of conciliation Kevin Foley are to facilitate, would result in a successful outcome.
“People have decided to get down to work through a series of intensive meetings over,” he said. “Hopefully we can be in a position to assist in those meetings and facilitating, in so far as possible, a resolution to the outstanding issues which are quite complex and quite detailed and quite emotive at this stage.”
Ahead of the meeting, the chairman of the public services committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu), Peter McLoone, said any negotiated settlement would have to address the issue of public sector pay and that he expected the process would be “difficult and challenging”. He said that, based on the outcome of a meeting with Taoiseach Brian Cowen on Thursday night, “both sides were serious about the engagement”.
“They know what we need and we know what they need so let’s see what happens in the talks.”
Mr McLoone said that no deadline had been set for the new process. He said that given the groundwork that had been carried out to date, Easter would be a realistic target.
Earlier, Ictu general secretary David Begg warned that failure to reach an agreement would be “catastrophic” for the country.
Mr Begg said a breakdown in talks would result in “very real consequences” in terms of the relationship between the Government and its employees and externally the perception would be “very, very bad”. Conversely, he said, any agreement would give the country “quite a considerable boost”.
“If this pay can be realigned with its original position over a period of time and in circumstances where savings can be achieved in other ways well then that surely in anybody’s point of view is a logical thing to do,” he said on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland.
The resumption of the talks was welcomed by Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny and Labour leader Eamon Gilmore. “Firm political leadership will be required if the talks are to be successful and it is important that the Taoiseach involves himself directly in the process,” Mr Gilmore said.