Social partnership talks - Compromise deal must be reached

AS trade union, business and political leaders search for a comprise formula for a new social partnership agreement, the only certainty is that the outlook is still uncertain.

Despite a flurry of informal contacts since the limping process was adjourned last Tuesday, an air of pessimism has dogged negotiations which resumed yesterday with the gap between employers and workers unchanged.

Clearly, the negotiations are on a knife-edge and a last-ditch plea by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern is the only indication that there is still a slim chance of success.

As the country’s biggest employer, it is obviously in the Government’s interest — in both political and fiscal terms — to complete the process before Mr Ahern leaves for the United Nations on Wednesday.

Considering his reputation as a deal-maker, failure to secure an agreement would be damaging for Mr Ahern in the run-up to next year’s general election, particularly after the latest opinion poll suggested that Fine Gael and Labour could form an alternative administration.

In effect, he would be the first Taoiseach in two decades not to clinch such a deal. Hopefully, his US deadline will concentrate minds and encourage both sides to seek a compromise formula that could break the logjam.

Having seen the talks drag on for three months, people can be forgiven for tiring of the endless wrangling. Nonetheless, the issues at stake — wages and the rights of workers — are of paramount national importance.

Remarkable, an implicit threat has been made that the absence of a deal means the charter of workers’ rights would also be lost. Why should that be the case?

In justice, the protection of workers against exploitation, whether they are Turkish, Polish or Irish, should not be predicated on the success or failure of a pay deal.

For more than two decades, national agreements have been a plank of Ireland’s economic progress, with employers and workers alike sticking to basic ground rules. Arguably, if the concept of social partnership is to mean anything, it should be expanded to embrace other issues, such as the cost of being ill under Ireland’s creaking health service, the vexed question of soaring house prices — especially the burden imposed on home-buyers by the Government’s stamp duty haul — and the crippling impact of State duties and excise on hapless energy consumers.

However, for now the priority must be to rescue the current partnership talks before they peter out, triggering a process that would see the country returning to the misery of the 1980s and descending into industrial relations mayhem.

Given the global scenario of soaring energy costs, volatile financial markets, and rising inflation, the objective of maintaining an atmosphere of relative calm on the Irish industrial relations scene takes on even greater significance than before.

Yesterday’s expression of hope by the Taoiseach that progress will be made and that people will move represents a last gasp bid to salvage a difficult situation where the size and duration of a pay increase are major obstacles to a deal.

Both sides must be prepared to give ground if the divergence is to be bridged between employers, who are worried about profit and productivity, and union leaders, who fear rising inflation will erode a low pay increase.

Against this uncertain backdrop, there is an onus on both sides to agree on a compromise formula of social partnership with the aim of copper-fastening the competitiveness, pay and rights of workers.