Garda strike action: An agreement slowly unravels
Industrial relations disputes usually come down to the wire and more often than not a satisfactory — or satisfactory enough — deal can be hammered out.
But this has been no ordinary dispute. It involves a cohort who have sworn an oath to the State, who have never gone out on strike before, and whose morale remains at an all-time low.
As the reality of an unpoliced state finally began to dawn on all in the government benches, Ms Fitzgerald dumped the battle talk in favour of a more conciliatory tone. She simply asked members of the force to “pull back from the brink”.
But stepping away from a strike, gardaí felt, would be a major climb-down with no sweetener, no restoration of pay, no win.
On the other side, Government is constricted by the Lansdowne Road Agreement and those public sector groups who remain loyal to it. To unwind the strict parameters laid down in the Lansdowne Road Agreement would likely signal the entire unravelling of the public sector pay agreement, something which the shaky minority government would struggle to deal with, before it even considered the massive additional bill it would create.
And this is the problem the Government will face when it comes to all grumbling public sector workers, be they teachers or guards, doctors or nurses. Although the Government had been well warned of the unprecedented strike action by the gardaí, they felt they had to stand firm and could only negotiate within the lines of Lansdowne Road.
While the Government side insisted that their offer, which was understood to be worth around €30m and was touching the outer limits of Lansdowne Road, was significant, what was put on the table in recent weeks and days wasn’t significant enough for the gardaí.
Despite negotiations, the gap between the Government’s offer and the demands of the gardaí failed to narrow.
As Fianna Fáil’s justice spokesman Jim O’Callaghan put it in the Dáil yesterday, a “Mexican stand-off” was allowed to develop between both sides.
“There are two parties to this dispute,” he said referring to the Government and the two Garda organisations. “To date, the second party to this dispute — the Government — has managed the dispute incompetently,” he said.
While the absence of a proper Garda presence on our streets is one of the most serious consequences any industrial dispute can bring, this is just one of many potential public sector industrial actions which are now brewing under the surface.
The elephant in the room is the Lansdowne Road Agreement, which many who signed up to now believe is past its sell-by-date but which the Government is clinging onto tightly.
