Deal uncertain as public sector pay talks continue

The outsourcing of public services, pay restoration, and how much the State’s employees should contribute to their pensions were among the crunch issues still to be resolved as the public sector pay talks continued late last night.

There also had been no resolution of the retention and recruitment demands which are so important to health unions.

What have reached initial resolution are the majority of the non-pay issues, including the Government’s plans to bring in more Saturday working.

A union source said that issue will likely be dealt with through reviews or further engagements after this process is completed, especially since Saturday working is already in existence in a number of areas . Unions had not been happy with, what was perceived to be, imposition of Saturday working into a national deal when it could as easily be discussed at sectoral level.

While there is some agreement on the non-pay issues, it is important to stress none of it is formally agreed until everything else is settled.

That means there was a lot of uncertainty at time of going to press as to whether a deal was achievable. The expectation was that outsourcing and figures for pay restoration and pension contributions would likely only come at the very end with formal proposals from the Government containing figures signed off by Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe.

On pay, a lot depends on how much of the Government’s €200m “fiscal space” it can give over to restoring public sector workers’ earnings.

As unions have pointed out, even €150m of that money was secured, spread over more than 300,000 people, that would be less than €500 or so per person, or roughly, a 1% increase on average.

On pensions, the level of contributions which will be expected will depend on how much of the €720m in revenue generated annually from the pension levy the Government will want to keep taking in.

The 23,000 holders of fast accrual pensions, including gardaí and prison officers, seem almost certain to be targeted with greater contributions expected from them than the other 250,000 public servants who have pre-2013 pensions.

The outsourcing issue is a red-line for unions. The Government has twice indicated it wants a new pay deal to take out the restriction on labour costs being included in the tenders for outsourced public services.

Unions have repeatedly argued that if that happened, every proposal from the private sector would succeed on the basis of minimum wage, rock bottom conditions, and zero job security.

The restoration of pre-crisis hours for public servants has been seen as a red-line for some unions, though it would seem it is less of a clincher for others.

It may be that a deal could be done which would see workers able to choose to take reduced working hours in lieu of wage increases.