Plugging inflation gap key to public sector pay talks, say unions

Last week, head of public sector union Forsa Kevin Callinan, who is leading the unions’ negotiating group, said that “stabilising” the current agreement before it expires at the end of this month is under pressure. File picture: Gareth Chaney/ Collins

The government has indicated it is prepared to repeal financial crash-era public pay measures in talks with union reps.

A third day of talks was conducted on Tuesday, following meetings on Monday and Friday of last week, as the Government and the coalition of 19 unions continued to sound out each others’ positions.

Talks will resume on Thursday, with union sources indicating that the success of the ongoing pay talks will hinge on their ability to plug the inflation gap in the economy and to stand separate to austerity-era industrial relations measures.

A new pay deal will need to be agreed before the end of December, when the current agreement known as Building Momentum expires, for it to be voted upon by union members in the new year, lending a deal of time pressure to the proceedings not least given the pending Christmas holidays.

It’s understood that Tuesday’s session, between a four-man representative group from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions’ public services committee and officials from the Department of Public Expenditure, was to focus on “follow-ons from both sides’ opening positions”.

The preference for Government would be that any deal agreed upon would be a multi-year one, to deliver a deal of certainty to public sector pay scales in the near term. However, union bosses insist that any deal be short-term while crash-era FEMPI (financial emergency measures in the public interest) measures continue to apply.

“There is a very clear focus on the cost of living and pay improvements, particularly for those who are the worst-paid in the services,” one source said, adding however that there is likewise “a strong focus on normalisation of industrial relations”, meaning an end to the austerity-era playing field.

“The public services committee has called for the final doing-away-with of FEMPI, so that we’re not constantly dealing with pay talks in a crisis situation,” they added.

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Last week, head of public sector union Forsa Kevin Callinan, who is leading the unions’ negotiating group, said that “stabilising” the current agreement before it expires at the end of this month is under pressure due to an “inconclusive” process of engagement regarding some of its commitments in terms of outstanding issues facing certain grades within the public service.

The focus on stabilisation is hampered by issues such as the current freeze in recruitment in place at the HSE—described by one union source as “effectively an austerity measure”—which resulted from, in the opinion of HSE CEO Bernard Gloster, an inadequate health budget for 2024 delivered by DPER last month.

A series of walk-out lunchtime protests by Forsa members at several HSE sites nationwide are planned for Wednesday and Thursday of this week in response to the moratorium on recruitment.

Those protests are the latest in what Forsa has described as a “sustained action of non-co-operation", which first began on October 6 and escalated on October 27 following the announcement of the hiring embargo within the health service.