Public service workers are being warned that upcoming talks on a new pay increase will be more complicated, because unions will not only have to convince the Government, but also the opposition.

Unions and Government face a collision course in upcoming negotiations over working hours.

Unions and Government face a collision course in upcoming negotiations over working hours.

Public service trade unions have given unequivocal support to Public Service Pay Commission (PSPC) chairman Kevin Duffy after his position was called into question by Garda representative bodies.

The country’s largest public sector union has warned that the newly-announced Public Service Pay Commission (PSPC) will quickly become “debased” in the eyes of the State’s employees if it is staffed by “the usual suspects”.

One of the country’s largest public sector unions has warned that the complete repeal of the legislation which cut the pay and pensions of State employees during the recession would see high earners gain substantially more than their lower-paid colleagues.

Staff working in one of the country’s largest public library networks are set to ballot for industrial action over controversial merger plans.

Only a year after the Lansdowne Road Agreement, pay for civil and public servants is back on the agenda. Bernard Harbor looks at the issues involved.

One of the country’s largest public service unions has said talks on pay restoration for public servants will have to form part of a wider drive for pay recovery for all workers.

The Impact trade union says it is good that the Government is looking at improving people's standard of living.

Workers are being warned to talk to their union or representative body before making a disclosure under the new whistleblower legislation to ensure they are fully protected under the laws.

One of the country’s largest public sector unions has rejected suggestions that transferring local authority staff to Irish Water or making them redundant would have had zero cost and also questioned the ESRI’s assertion that 1,700 staff could run the country’s water services.

Six hundred farm and food inspectors at the Department of Agriculture will engage in industrial action today in a row over cost-saving reforms.

There has been a breakthrough in the LRC talks aimed at averting industrial action by cabin crew at Aer Lingus.

One in 10 of the workers in full-time employment who are forced to boost their earnings with family income supplement payments are state employees.

Passengers face disruption on regional flights out of Ireland next week as pilots at Aer Arann plan to strike over pay.

Trade unions warned today that there will be industrial action if the Government imposes further public-sector pay cuts.

Women could be forced out of the public service because they will have less access to work-sharing and flexible working arrangements under the changes proposed under Croke Park II.

Talks on an extension to the Croke Park Agreement continued into the early hours, despite unions representing almost 70,000 public servants walking out over the Government’s demands.

Public sector union leaders have said they are pessimistic about the prospect of a reaching a new agreement with the Government aimed at making a further €1bn in savings.

Talks aimed at saving a further €1bn from the public sector pay bill are beginning today.

Public service unions have agreed to enter talks with management to discuss the Government's plan to raise a further €1bn from the Croke Park Agreement.

WRITING in the Irish Examiner yesterday, eight Fine Gael TDs said there was a question mark over the extent of the savings being delivered by the Croke Park Agreement.

Around 300,000 public servants are to have their sick leave entitlements cut by half, it was announced today.

In common with his previous rants against the Croke Park agreement, Ivan Yates’s article (“Ministerial Muppet mayhem as Croke Park ‘reform’ exposed,” Irish Examiner, Feb 16) puts forward no alternative programme to bridge the deficit and meet Troika demands for a reduction in public spending and staffing.

JOHN Mulligan is mistaken to say that Irish local authorities are “bloated” (Letters, Dec 21) when local authority staffing has fallen by 20% since 2008.

STAFF at Aer Lingus are bracing themselves for the possibility of further cuts after management questioned the company’s future.

I DIDN’T agree with the conclusions in your two-page feature on the Croke Park agreement (April 13). But the Irish Examiner is to be congratulated on a rare attempt to put the debate into some context for readers, and to report on the agreement’s achievements as well as its shortcomings.

RYANAIR chief executive Michael O’Leary has forecast that rival Aer Lingus “will be destroyed” if it gives into unions in the rostering dispute.

IN spite of the expected cancellation of approximately a dozen flights a day for the duration of its rostering dispute with cabin crew, Aer Lingus still hopes to accommodate the vast majority of its passengers for the foreseeable future.

The IMPACT union have accused Aer Lingus of changing the duties of their cabin crew on the morning of their working day.

TENSIONS have arisen between trade unions and the Government over the implementation of the Croke Park agreement on public sector reform.

YOUR editorial (‘Realism and sanity must prevail’, January 22) omitted one fact that is essential to understanding why public service unions began taking industrial action from Monday last.

A second one-day strike by 250,000 public sector workers was called off tonight as Government and unions edged closer to agreeing €1.3bn pay cuts.

ENVIRONMENT Minister John Gormley has been criticised for “extreme irresponsibility” after suggesting “a type of civil war” existed between workers in the public and private sectors.

HOW happy the top bankers, property speculators and other fat cats who created the economic crisis must have been when they read the Irish Examiner editorial (“The hardest decisions were dodged”, Irish Examiner, April 8).

Angry union leaders tonight refused to rule out strike action to oppose the Government’s pension levy designed to save €1.4bn.

AFTER weeks of speculation, the Government will today inform the social partners how it proposes to cut up to €2 billion in public spending.

TRADE union reaction to the public service plan was largely negative last night with IMPACT, the largest union in the sector, claiming it would result only in job cuts, not reform.

THE weekly pay of public sector workers rose by €30 in the space of a year, show figures released by the Central Statistics Office.

Your claim that there’s one manager for every six frontline health workers is way off the mark (Irish Examiner, October 10). A proper look at the figures shows that about 4% of health staff are in non-frontline admin or management jobs. That’s because most ‘administrative’ workers deliver services directly to the public or assist doctors, nurses and other health professionals. For instance, the ‘managers’ you attack include medical secretaries and reception staff. Would it be better to have doctors and nurses booking appointments and typing instead of treating patients?