Croke Park deal looks set to be ratified

THE Croke Park deal on public sector pay looks set to be ratified next week after the country’s two biggest public sector unions backed the deal.

IMPACT, the country’s largest public sector union, voted overwhelmingly in favour of the agreement by a margin of 77% to 23% in a ballot.

SIPTU, the largest union in the country, also voted by a substantial majority to support the deal with over 65% voting to support the proposals negotiated by public service unions and employers at Croke Park last March.

The two results mean the majority of public sector workers have chosen to back the Croke Park deal, which is almost certain to be ratified at a meeting of the Public Services Committee of ICTU next Tuesday.

IMPACT general secretary designate Shay Cody said the Government needed to indicate that it will challenge senior public service managers and require them to start acting now to work the agreement.

“The Taoiseach should begin by calling all the key public service management players together, with staff representatives, to set out how the reforms are going to be driven and staff involved,” he said.

SIPTU president Jack O’Connor said the result would help advance the interests of Irish people by restructuring the public service on an agreed basis.

“Our members in the public service have decided to go with a medium-term strategy which protects their interests in the matters of pay, job security and pensions while providing a framework for the re-instatement of the agreed rates over time.”

Under the proposed deal, the Government has guaranteed there will be no further pay cuts or compulsory redundancies for four years in return for productivity concessions from more than 250,000 public sector workers. However, the deal contains no specific guarantees on reversing the pay cuts put in place in last December’s budget.

There is to be a review of public sector pay in spring of next year and in each subsequent year. These reviews will take account of sustainable savings made as a result of the implementation of the reform programme and will determine if there is any scope for the reversal of the pay cuts.

A number of other unions, including the Teachers Union of Ireland have already voted to reject the deal and have said they will not be bound by the result of a majority vote at next Tuesday’s meeting.

The executive committees of both SIPTU and IMPACT had urged members to vote in favour of the deal negotiated between unions and the Government at Croke Park last March.

Taoiseach Brian Cowen said he would allow the trade union movement to continue its discussions ahead of next week's meeting of the public services' committee of ICTU.

He said: "Hopefully, if ratified, we can get on with the job of the agreed transformation we want to see in our public service. [And] working with our trade union partners to implement changes that will provide for prospects for improvement in their standards of living in the future.”