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.

Since employers are represented on the NIB, unions understood that IBEC had at least agreed to the necessity to address the issue of jobs displacement and migrant workers.

Unions also secured a Government commitment to deal with those issues in a first strand of talks before core issues such as pay would be addressed.

But as soon as talks began employers adopted a tough stance on jobs displacement and workers rights, arguing that there was no need for new regulatory measures which would increase their cost base.

Now a new Government push has seen both sides engage, in a manner inside sources last night described as the first full engagement.

“Nobody has conceded anything but they are now looking at the issues and teasing them out from the point of view of what might be done and what that might add up to,” a source confirmed.

Further talks convened at Government buildings after tea last night, but the Government’s original deadline of St Patrick’s day for an agreement is set to be significantly surpassed.