SIPTU: Social partnership still the best way forward

SIPTU’s general president has said he personally believes social partnership is still the best way forward — but only if major changes in the way workers are treated are guaranteed.

Speaking on the final day of his union’s biennial delegate conference, Jack O’Connor said it could not be ignored that the period of social partnership had been accompanied by the years of the most sustained and greatest improvements in the living standards of working people in the history of the state.

Mr O’Connor was forced to defend the principle of social partnership in light of concerns about pay rises not keeping pace with inflation by some members during a debate yesterday. Jack O’Connor admitted that, particularly in the education sector, a policy of imposing major change had to be addressed.