Government chose path of conflict
It was, in fact, the unions that first proposed massive public service reform measures in the negotiations with the Government at the end of last year.
This entirely new approach to managing and delivering services would have delivered the payroll savings required by the Government in 2010 and beyond, while ensuring that vital services were protected and enhanced as expenditure and staff numbers fell.
This transformation would have meant massive changes in work practices for staff across the public services.
But the Government rejected this approach because it wanted to impose public service pay cuts, giving the green light to employers to cut incomes across the economy.
IMPACT and other public service unions still believe that a transformation of our public services is possible and necessary. But the Government can’t have it both ways. It defies human psychology — let alone industrial relations — to expect public servants to take the Government’s pay cuts and then deliver the transformation that was offered as part of an alternative deal, which would have delivered the necessary savings while protecting incomes and services.
We don’t accept that the Government’s imposition of pay cuts was necessary or that there is “no alternative”. The public service transformation, developed by the unions and now sought by the HSE and others, could be back on the table if the Government was prepared to negotiate on the basis that the pay cuts can be reversed if equivalent or larger savings are made through public service reforms.
Otherwise, the dispute between the Government and its staff will continue. But it was the Government, rather than public servants, that chose the path of conflict over reform.
Bernard Harbor
National Secretary
IMPACT
Nerney’s Court
Dublin 1
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