Will Government ever grasp the nettle of public sector pay?

Any attempt to develop a fair process for determining pay levels in the public sector is most likely to occur within the collective bargaining arena for the forseeable future, write Thomas Turner and Darragh Flannery.

IT NOW looks as if the Public Pay Services Commission (PSPC) will consider the exceptional problems of the recruitment and retention of nurses and the possibility of a special pay deal limited to nurses in the future.

Yet like its ill-fated predecessor, the Public Service Benchmarking Body (PSBB), the commission faces formidable challenges. The PSBB delivered its first report in 2002 and recommended a series of significant wage increases for most public servants based on extensive job evaluations of private and public-sector jobs.