McCreevy lashes out at unions

FINANCE MINISTER Charlie McCreevy lashed out at unions yesterday, accusing them of failing to live up to their side of the national wage deal.

Firing a warning shot across the vows of the trade union movement, the minister said the unions had signed up to the agreement with stronger promises of industrial peace.

Referring indirectly to the public health doctors strike and threats of industrial action from other groups in the health sector, he said the disputes were raising questions about the new national pay agreement.

“We are now only a few months on from the conclusion of the negotiations and ratification of the agreement and we find ourselves with a number of disputes which, in my view, are in breach of the peace terms of Sustaining Progress - and indeed would have been in breach of the terms of the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness,” the minister said.

The first payments to public sector workers under benchmarking will be paid next month, when the first quarter of the award, backdated to December 1, 2001, will be included in pay packets.

But the minister said he was concerned the present disputes will have implications for the implementation of the terms of Sustaining Progress.

“More widely, however, unless they are resolved speedily they raise questions about the credibility of the Sustaining Progress agreement as a whole and, indeed, could cast a shadow on the whole benchmarking exercise. I would hope the current difficulties can be resolved and that there would be a return to the more orderly arrangements envisaged in Sustaining Progress,” he said.

The public health doctors, affiliated to the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO), have been on strike for almost two months, and other unions are threatening to come out in support.

Tomorrow the IMO will meet with the Health Service Employers Agency at the Labour Relations Commission in a bid to break the deadlock in the dispute.

At the SIPTU national nursing convention earlier this week, the union vowed to back any medical workers fighting cutbacks.

SIPTU nursing chief Oliver McDonagh said the national pay deal could not work if the cutbacks continued and industrial peace was a two way commitment.

All of the previous pay deals contained industrial peace commitments, but Sustaining Progress strengthened these clauses even further than before, Mr McCreevy said.

“Everyone involved knows that industrial relations stability is an essential requirement and must be delivered on,” he said.

The minister was responding to a Dáil question put to him by Fine Gael frontbencher Gay Mitchell asking him if he was satisfied with the operation of benchmaking and its impact on the public finances and the efficiency of public services.