Public sector workers should trigger review of pay amid inflation, say unions

Irish Congress of Trade Unions chair Kevin Callinan said that sustained inflation and the current strength of the public finances are justification for a review of the current agreement. Picture: Conor Healy/Picture It Photography

Public sector workers should trigger a review of their current pay agreement on foot of the ongoing global inflation and cost of living crisis, the head of the country’s largest public service union has said.

Kevin Callinan, the chair of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, said that sustained inflation and the current strength of the public finances are justification for a review of the current agreement.

That agreement, known as Building Momentum, was agreed via an expedited talks process in December 2020.

Mr Callinan said that the agreement will see maximum pay increases of just 1.2% in 2022. He said that the assumptions underpinning the agreement need to be revisited given the current circumstances, and cited the CSO’s statement on Thursday that inflation is currently at its highest level in 21 years.

“It’s also clear that the cost of living is on an upward trajectory, despite earlier hopes that prices would stabilise and fall,” said Mr Callinan, who is also general secretary of Forsa, the country’s largest public sector union.

There was no assumption of the high and sustained cost-of-living increases in play when the agreement was negotiated in late 2020.”

Building Momentum’s text states that its terms cannot be revisited over the course of the agreement, which is due to expire at the end of 2022, unless “the assumptions underlying this agreement need to be revisited”, whereupon both sides must engage.

“The public finances are in surplus, and both the unemployment rate and the projected deficit are much lower than anticipated at the time Building Momentum was negotiated and accepted by public servants in ballots,” said Mr Callinan.

The agreement in place was delivered by fast-track in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic which had made negotiations problematic. It laid the emphasis on “sectoral bargaining” in order to alleviate pressure from certain professions less content with the blanket nature of the pay provisions.

Not all of those provisions have as yet been ratified by the Government.

Mr Callinan’s suggestion that the agreement be revisited is the latest in a set of moves by the unions aimed at kickstarting negotiations for a new deal.

Last month, the Forsa chief called on the Government to “clear the decks” for negotiations on a new deal by finalising both the sectoral bargaining provisions and the restoration of added working time, a casualty of the post-crash austerity years.

The union said at the time that the cost of living must be the focus of a new public service pay agreement with negotiations to begin by May of this year.