Delayed partnership pay talks set to begin

NATIONAL pay talks are finally set to kick off in earnest this week — more than six months after they were first scheduled to start.

Talks were originally scheduled to begin last November in order to have a new social partnership deal in place before the current agreement — Sustaining Progress — expired at the end of last year. However, the onset of the Irish Ferries scandal, in which the company sought to displace Irish workers with cheaper agency crews from abroad, sparked the largest partnership crisis in almost 20 years of agreements.

The Irish Ferries dispute saw the largest trade union marches in recent history as SIPTU and then the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) voted to withdraw from talks. Finally, after months of intense negotiations, the Government’s top industrial relations troubleshooting body, the National Implementation Body, brokered a deal allowing social partnership talks to recommence.

However, before agreeing to re-enter talks on February 8 this year, unions obtained a Government commitment that the issues at the heart of the Irish Ferries scandal — jobs displacement and the protection of workers’ rights — would be discussed before core elements such as a pay deal be finalised.

Those discussions proved far more difficult than anticipated, as employers resisted measures that would increase their administrative burden and increase costs.

After almost three months of tough discussions, ICTU’s executive decided last week enough progress had been made on employment rights to allow the mainstream talks proceed.

Although none of the measures will be copper-fastened until an overall final agreement is concluded, unions have guarantees of a range of improvements.

Those include a far stronger labour inspectorate and a new statutory body, the Office of the Director for Employment Rights Compliance, to police employment legislation.

In addition there will be a dramatic increase in penalties for those convicted of breaching labour laws and new legislation to deter employers from making workers redundant to replace them with cheaper labour.

Now, all sides will this week turn their attention to a national pay deal and other issues of concern to the social partners.

Although any pay deal will likely stick very close to anticipated inflation rates, it will be staggered and renegotiated every 18 months to two years.

That would allow the Government’s preference for an unprecedented 10-year agreement to be finalised — a move which should deliver industrial relations stability.