Impact wants public and private sector pay restored

One of the country’s largest public service unions has said talks on pay restoration for public servants will have to form part of a wider drive for pay recovery for all workers.

It is now almost a fortnight since Public Expenditure Minister Brendan Howlin said talks would begin next year on reversing elements of the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Acts, which included the pension levy in 2009 and cuts to pay rates in 2010 and pensions in 2011. It also underpinned temporary pay reductions under the Haddington Road Agreement.

In a blog on his union’s website, Impact’s head of communications Bernard Harbor told members that “unions must argue the case for public service pay restoration in the broader context of recovery for all”. “Virtually everyone is worse off now than they were a few years ago, but it has happened in different ways depending on where you work and what your personal circumstances are,” he said. “Impact’s strategy for pay restoration reflects this by highlighting the need for continued action on unemployment, along with pay restoration in the public, private and community sectors – including the restoration of effective statutory wage-setting mechanisms for the lowest paid workers in the private sector.”

He said in the aftermath of Mr Howlin’s announcement, the tenor of an article in a Sunday newspaper had given a strong indication that public relations battle lines on the issue would be drawn around the “divide” between public and private sector workers.

“Impact will continue to engage on the public-private pay issue with the facts,” Mr Harbor said. “These are that economists disagree on the size and significance of the pay gap, but the most balanced and comprehensive study of recent years by the CSO in 2012 concluded that, depending on how it’s measured, it could be as little as zero or as much as 12% once the pension levy is factored in.”

Mr Harbor said back in 2009, unions spectacularly failed to dismiss the notion of a public-private divide. “In the shock and hurt of public service pay cuts, we allowed ourselves to repeatedly come across as ignorant or dismissive of the hardships — particularly unemployment — being experienced in the rest of the economy,” Mr Harbor said.

“In 2009, a media-orchestrated backlash against public servants made it relatively easy for politicians to cut pay. Times and austerity-weary attitudes have changed and Brendan Howlin’s statement two weeks ago has not provoked a similar backlash. Our detractors will move heaven and earth to change that.”