President Michael D Higgins will address the opening session of Fórsa’s first-ever national delegate conference, which takes place in Killarney in May. The conference will see hundreds of delegates, representing all the union’s branches, set policy and elect Fórsa officers for the first time.

This is one of three Fórsa delegate conferences set to take place in the April-May period.

The Services and Enterprises Division conference takes place in Galway on 12th-13th April. Up to 150 delegates are expected, representing workers in commercial and non-commercial semi-state organisations and private companies.

Next, some, 650 delegates will attend Fórsa’s Civil Service Division conference, which is set for Killarney on 19th and 20th April. Then the full national conference, with up to a thousand delegates, takes place on 16th-18th May.

The two divisional conferences are taking place this year on an exceptional basis. That’s because they are the divisions directly impacted by the recent amalgamation, and they need to elect new divisional executive committees. All six Fórsa divisions will hold conference events in 2019.

Separately Fórsa’s Education Division will host a conference in Dublin on 5th April. This is not a formal policy-setting conference, but the division holds an event during each year’s education ‘conference season’ to explore policy and service issues.

Fórsa wants pay scales shortened as quickly as possible for staff who joined the public service after January 2011. The union has said a new talks process, agreed before Saint Patrick’s weekend, must lead to equal treatment for all public servants by removing two points from new entrant pay scales.

Under discriminatory measures announced by the then-Government in December 2010, it currently takes so-called ‘new entrants’ two years longer than their colleagues to reach the top of their pay scales.
Earlier this month the ICTU Public Services Committee, which represents almost all unions in the sector, secured agreement for new talks under a clause in the Public Service Stability Agreement (PSSA), which allows for an “examination” of the new entrants’ pay issue. This followed union representations to Government.

In initial discussions last October, public service management confirmed that 53,000 workers had been hired since lower ‘new entrant’ scales were imposed in January 2011. Management also acknowledged that unions had opposed the new scales, and had used the first opportunity available – the Haddington Road Agreement – to equalise the maximum points of the scales.

Fórsa senior general secretary Shay Cody said it was an issue of fairness and equity. “The main outstanding issue is the existence of two additional scale points for staff employed since 2011. That’s why we want to see the length of these scales reduced by two points as quickly as possible, in order to improve new entrants’ incomes and equalise the time it takes public servants to reach the top of pay scales,” he said.

Cody acknowledged that the different length of pay scales across the public service was a complicating factor, but said the talks process was capable of dealing with this. “We need to avoid a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach that delivers fairness for some but not for all. The aim of this process must be to find a solution that works for everyone,” he said.

A Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (DPER) report published on 16th March found that some 60,000 ‘new entrants’ had been adversely affected by the unilateral cuts imposed in 2011, and that it would cost an estimated €200 million a year to resolve the problem.

Proposed industrial action at Sunbeam House Services has been suspended by Fórsa after management agreed to a number of measures to expedite pay restoration at the Wicklow disability service providers.

The union said management has agreed to a process that will identify staff who have lost income since emergency pay measures were introduced in 2009, before submitting a business case for pay restoration to its main funder, the HSE.

Crucially, the HSE has agreed to seek additional funding once the business case is assessed, by the end of June at the latest.

Sunbeam House provides a range of supports to adults with intellectual disabilities at various locations in county Wicklow and south county Dublin.

Earlier, Fórsa had announced it would hold a one-day strike on Thursday 22nd March, after an overwhelming majority (93%) of the union’s members backed industrial action. The strike is now suspended.

Fórsa official Ryan McKinney said the union has now received a written commitment from the HSE, which was progress because previous attempts to involve the HSE had been unsuccessful.

“The process we won during talks over the weekend represent a significant step forward, which should lead to the start of pay restoration by early 2019 at the latest. As a result the union has confirmed its intention to postpone the planned strike pending the evaluation process scheduled to end by 30 June. If there’s any slippage in this timescale, the union will use the overwhelmingly support shown by members in the ballot to recommence preparations for strike action,” he said.

The union says Sunbeam House management always accepted that pay restoration was due, and had carried the liability in its accounts since incomes were cut in 2009. But the HSE, which is Sunbeam’s primary funder, had previously refused to get involved.

Fórsa represents a range of Sunbeam House staff including social care workers, care assistants, training instructors, support workers, bus escorts, community workers, social care managers and administrative staff.

The first meeting of a group set up to deal with Fórsa’s claim for the restoration of ‘twilight payments’ met last week. The payment – which saw staff paid at ‘time and one-sixth’ for working between six and eight o’clock in the evening – was discontinued in 2011.

It was subsequently restored in some areas of nursing, but not for clerical staff of social care workers. The recently-established process is examining where evening work patterns have become more demanding in the years following the abolition of the payments.

Fórsa tabled the issue at last years’ pay talks, which led to the Public Service Stability Agreement (PSSA). The PSSA, which was overwhelming backed by Fórsa members, included a commitment to a process to deal with the union’s claim.

Health service management has agreed to consider Fórsa’s proposal that superintendent structures in the civil registration service should mirror those in community healthcare organisations (CHO).

The advance was made at a recent meeting called to discuss the implications of a report by consultant Sean McHugh, which was commissioned following an industrial dispute over capacity issues and the strain that so-called ‘marriages of convenience’ were putting on resources.

There are currently eight superintendent regions in the service, which the McHugh report said should fall to four. Fórsa wants the number increased to nine to mirror the same number of community healthcare organisations. The union says this would be fully consistent with strategic health service planning.

Fórsa has also called for a national lead to be introduced into the service. And it is vigorously pursuing the strengthening of the staff structures, as recommended by the McHugh report.

Talks are continuing.

This article was revised on 10^th April to correct a factual error regarding the number of superintendent regions currently in place. The original article said there were four. There are, in fact, eight.

Fórsa will tomorrow (Wednesday) meet the health department’s review group that’s looking into private practice in Ireland’s public hospitals. The union has already made a written submission to the body, chaired by Ronan Toomey, in which it argued for state-employed consultants working exclusively for public patients.

The union also called for directly employed GPs, saying citizens should not be obliged to access the public health service via a GP in private practise.

Fórsa believes there would be significant costs attached to employing ‘public-only’ doctors in both hospitals and community surgeries. But it says taxpayers would be willing to fund a system where “citizens had access to an equitable health system in which they could place their trust.”

The union also underscored its support for the Sláintecare report, which calls for a universal, accessible and single-tier health service. The report has won cross-party support.

Fórsa also expressed its support for a health system “largely founded on strong community health structures that maximise the skills and strength of health and social care professionals.
 
And the submission calls for hospital clusters to be based on geographical and demographic realities, rather than “the academic pathways of medics.”

In the last news bulletin we asked your opinion about a new report which said Brexit will hit the Irish economy more than any other country in Europe, with a ‘hard Brexit’ costing the country about €18billion.

The message to the UK government from those who took the survey was very clear, with 65% saying Theresa May’s government needs to swallow its pride and find a way out of Brexit.

The possibility that Brexit will cost even more than estimated in the report by Copenhagen Economics was highlighted by 20% of respondents.

Those that thought the €18bn was an overstatement, and that there’s still time for the EU to negotiate a less harmful deal, accounted for 15% of responses.

Last week the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) published research that said Brexit could cost Irish households up to €1,400 a year on average as prices rise, with lower income families faring the worst.

#Brexitshambles

See also: Brexit to cost you €1,360 a year 

• Declare the hosuing and homelessness crisis an emergency
• Provide a minimum of 10,000 public housing units per year on public land
• Make housing a constitutional right
• End evictions, bank repossessions and sell-offs to vulture funds
• Legislate for security of tenure, real rent control and affordable rents
• End B&B and hotel emergency accommodation, and improve emergency accommodation facilities.

Fórsa has demanded the reinstatement of tax relief on individual workers’ trade union subscriptions, which was worth €70 a year to union members when it was abolished in 2011.

Addressing the Oireachtas Committee on Budgetary Oversight last week, the union said the current approach to tax relief discriminates against PAYE workers because farmers, accountants, solicitors and other relatively well-paid professionals can claim generous tax relief on subscriptions paid to professional associations and the Irish Farmers’ Association.

Fórsa lead organiser Joe O’Connor told committee members that employers also receive full tax relief on their contributions to business lobby organisations like Ibec and ISME.

Many countries – including Germany, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Australia and Canada – give tax relief of trade union subscriptions.

“Irish trade union members get less favourable tax treatment than workers in comparable European countries, and the Government’s continued refusal to reinstate the relief here is perpetuating unfair treatment of PAYE workers when compared to farmers, self-employed professionals and even corporations.

“Reintroducing the tax break would be an affordable enhancement of income restoration, and a symbolic statement that unions and their members play a valued role in our society and economy,” said O’Connor.

Tax relief on trade union subs was introduced in 2001 after a long campaign by IMPACT – one of the unions that amalgamated to form Fórsa earlier this year. Initially worth €100 a year at the standard rate of tax, it had increased to €350 by 2008. This was worth €70 a year to trade union members who claimed the relief. The exchequer saved €26 million a year after it was abolished in Budget 2011.

Substantive aspects of employment law need to be reviewed to protect workers in the so-called ‘gig economy,’ but reform of social welfare and taxation policy is a bigger issue. So said Jeremias Prassl of Magdalen College, Oxford, who spoke at the prestigious Industrial Relations News conference on 8th March.

Confronted with zero-hour arrangements, bogus ‘self-employment,’ and other new forms of work organisation, Professor Prassl said unions had to address the limits of laws on unfair dismissal, minimum wages, and qualifying periods for job protection.

But he said tax was a bigger issue because the so-called gig economy was luring people away from standard employment relationships by offering them a “no income tax” proposition.

Stephen Holst of legal firm McCann Fitzgerald agreed, saying that at least €60 million was lost to the exchequer through the false classification of work as self-employment. This is because self-employment allows companies to avoid paying employers’ PRSI, while workers could avoid tax.

He said such arrangements could initially be attractive to workers, but were less so when they needed PRSI-related benefits like maternity leave, pensions and social security. He said tax and PRSI reforms “could be the biggest driver of change, even though it seems quite boring.”

Prassl said there was evidence that the ‘gig economy’ was causing huge tax losses in other jurisdictions too. And he said moving workers out of the PAYE system meant they carried all the burden of tax compliance.

He said it was possible to address the problem because all the data about who works, who for, and for how much, existed on the platforms – like Uber and Deliveroo – that typify the ‘gig economy.’

Prassl said unions should tackle these aspects of the changing economy while embracing technology and innovation. He said we should avoid “falling into a crazy Luddite trap” because, over the centuries, technology had never destroyed the net amount of work, but had made it “better, safer, and more fun.”

He said unions faced a practical challenge to develop services that gig workers want. But reaching and communicating with them was doable because they are among the most IT and social media literate.

He said even some employers in the sector now saw the value of basic standards and workers’ representation.

Fórsa deputy general secretary Kevin Callinan was part of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) delegation when Leo Varadkar chaired a meeting of the Labour Employer Economic Forum (LEEF) last month. Kevin, who is a vice president of ICTU, was accompanied by ICTU president Sheila Nunan, general secretary Patricia King, and assistant general secretary Owen Reidy.

Established in 216, the LEEF is a forum for dialogue between Government, unions and employers.

An Taoiseach was joined by ministers Paschal Donohoe and Heather Humphreys, and by minister of State Damien English as well as an array of senior officials. Employers were represented by Danny McCoy and Maeve McElwee from the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (Ibec), Tom Parlon of the Construction Industry Federation, and Ian Talbot of Chambers Ireland.

At the outset An Taoiseach indicated that the achievement of the Government’s objectives would benefit from consultation with unions and employers. Later in the meeting he referred to the fact that the country was entering a different phase and that certain senior officials would be asked to liaise with the social partners to see what structured dialogue might look like.

The meeting agenda consisted of an update on Brexit developments and a presentation by Paschal Donohoe on the Project Ireland 2040 plan. During the exchanges that followed the ICTU members pointed to the all-island nature of Congress and pressed the importance of measures to protect vulnerable workers and regions from the effects of a hard Brexit.

Kevin took the opportunity to raise the failure to include ICTU representation on the governing bodies of the proposed technological universities. And he linked the vision for our country post-Brexit to the debate on the future of Europe, arguing that mature social dialogue was just one element of a fair society that also needed to include collective bargaining rights, an effective social protection safety net and quality public services.

At the conclusion it was agreed that the next LEEF meeting would deal with the issue of pensions in addition to the standing agenda item of Brexit.

Speaking after the meeting Kevin said: “There appears to be a change of heart on the part of the Government in relation to social dialogue. It is too early to say if this is genuine or whether it will be possible to develop a useful engagement. For the process to be worthwhile it will have to show that it has the capacity to advance issues like affordable housing, SláinteCare, childcare provision and costs, occupational pension coverage and employment rights. We are a long way from that yet.”

In the margins of the meeting, Paschal Donohoe confirmed that he would accept an invitation to address and debate with the ICTU Executive Council. That meeting took place last Wednesday (21st March) in the Fórsa offices at Nerney’s Court.

Fórsa welcomed the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights for Persons with Disabilities. The convention was ratified by the Dáil on 7th March. 
 
The UN convention protects equal treatment for all people with disabilities with respect to human rights and fundamental freedoms. The convention was adopted by the UN in 2006. Ireland is the last of the 27 European Union states to ratify the convention.
 
Fórsa’s head of division for Civil Service, Andy Pike, said: “The convention makes absolutely clear that persons with disabilities are citizens with the right to fully participate in all aspects of society.
 
“This is particularly relevant to the employment of people with disabilities. The latest CSO figures show that 6.5% of the Irish workforce identify as having a disability. The real figure is likely to be higher as a result of under-reporting,” he said.
 
Implementation
 
Mr Pike added, “Now that the convention has been ratified, we will press the Government to implement the convention in order to maximise the support and representation available to workers with disabilities.”

Fórsa is calling on the Government to introduce the following measures:

• Provide meaningful employment opportunities for people with disabilities to enter the workforce
• Establish new specific employment supports, such as job coaches and mentors, to assist people with disabilities to find jobs and remain in the workforce
• Ensure that employers abide by their obligations to facilitate the employment of people with disabilities, and their obligation to make reasonable adjustments to the working conditions of an employee with a disability
• Examine ways to maximise the potential for people with disabilities to be adequately represented in senior posts across the public service.

Representatives from across Fórsa met for the first time last week to explore the potential for new cross-divisional, grade specific bodies called ‘equivalent grade committees’ or ‘professional committees.

Under the rules of new union, the National Executive Committee can approve the establishment of committees to bring together representatives from the same or similar grades. The aim is to co-ordinate and focus debate on issues of common interest.

Two committees are initially being set up: one for clerical officers and grade IIIs, and the second for executive grades, including grades VI-VII in health, local government, education and non-commercial semi state organisations.

A clerical officer/grade III seminar took place recently, where representatives from the CO grade in the union’s Civil Service Division met with grade III colleagues from health, local government and education.

Two days later the civil service executive grades (EO, HEO and AO) met with reps of grades IV-VII from health, local authorities, education and the non-commercial semi-state sector.

Both sessions heard presentations on pay and conditions and the current industrial relations issues specific to each grade in each division. These were followed by workshops, which considered how to build common work programmes for the grades and how the new committees might be structured after Fórsa’s first national conference in May.

The committees are expected to be important vehicles that will bring common purpose to members in particular grades in different divisions of the union, while helping to integrate representatives of the three former unions into the new Fórsa organisation.

The groups are to meet again after the May conference to consider a draft written report drawn up by joint general secretary Eoin Ronayne prior to the report being presented to the incoming executive for discussion and action.