Partnership talks looking up as employers and unions start to engage

EMPLOYERS and unions have finally begun to engage substantively for the first time after a full month of zero progress in talks on a new national deal.

Partnership talks aimed at agreeing a successor to Sustaining Progress have been deadlocked since late January as employers’ group IBEC and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions disagreed over the necessity for new measures to protect workers.

Unions only agreed to enter talks after the Government’s industrial relations troubleshooting body - the National Implementation Body (NIB) - made a commitment to address labour regulation in the wake of the Irish Ferries scandal.