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Fórsa has called on the Government to allocate funds in October’s Budget to begin shortening pay scales for public service ‘new entrants’ next year. This would be earlier than originally envisaged in the current public sector pay deal, the Public Service Stability Agreement (PSSA).

Speaking at the union’s Civil Service Division conference in Killarney last week, Fórsa joint general secretary Tom Geraghty accepted that no money was budgeted to resolve the injustice in 2018.

“While it is correct to say that no monies have been allocated to do this in 2018, I believe that Ireland’s strengthening economic and exchequer recovery means it should be possible to start funding it next year, rather than delaying until 2020 or beyond. That would require funds to be allocated in October’s Budget,” he said.

Tom and other officers of ICTU’s Public Services Committee will meet senior Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (DPER) officials to discuss the matter on Friday (27th April). The talks are taking place under the PSSA agreement, negotiated last summer, which allows for an “examination” of the new entrants’ pay issue.

Friday’s meeting is likely to be the first of a series of engagements dealing with the practicalities of equalising the length of pay scales. The Government has not conceded Fórsa’s call for some money to change hands next year, despite recent media reports that pay adjustments may be “on the way” for new entrants.

The union has also cautioned that media reports of payments averaging €3,300 a year are overblown, as this figure includes employer costs – like employers’ PRSI payments – which do not appear in pay packets.

The term ‘new entrants’ refers to those employed in the civil and public service since January 2011. Their pay scales are currently two points longer than those of other staff, which means it takes them two years longer to get to the top of their pay scale.

Negotiators must confront the technical challenges presented by the fact that the length of pay scales varies widely across the civil and public service. Unions also want to ensure that any solution is fair to all new entrants, regardless of how long they have been employed.

Tom said pay equity was a priority for all trade unions, which had addressed the inequity in various national pay talks. “Every bit of progress in addressing this injustice has been achieved by unions collectively, through national pay negotiations and public service pay agreements,” he said.

Delegates to Fórsa’s Civil Service Division conference which took place in Killarney last week, called for a review of a centralised HR shared services system, commonly known as ‘PeoplePoint,’ after a union study showed that 83% of civil servants surveyed had experienced problems with it. Motions to the conference also called for PeoplePoint to be scrapped, and for HR services to be returned to individual departments and agencies.

More than half of the 1,079 civil servants who responded to Fórsa’s survey said their pay had been affected by problems encountered with PeoplePoint. Another 18% said their sick pay had been affected, and 6% said pension payments had been hit.

The largest single problem encountered was overpayments, which staff must repay (23%), followed by problems with sick leave reconciliation (21%), annual leave (19%), payment of increments (17%), pay adjustments following promotion (13.5%), underpayments (9%), pensions and parental leave (7% each).

Some 67% said there were delays resolving their problem and 53% complained of poor communications. While 31% said they were satisfied with the way their query had been processed and resolved, 37% said they were not. Almost a third said they were still awaiting an outcome.

Only 15% said they had registered a formal complaint, with over half saying they were unaware of complaints procedures.

Fórsa official Derek Mullen said systemic problems with the system meant staff working in PeoplePoint were in an impossible situation, a sentiment reflected in many of the ten conference motions on the subject submitted by union branches. “That PeoplePoint works at all is down to the dedication of the civil servants employed there. They’ve had an extraordinarily difficult time in recent years as they try to make a poorly designed system function.

“But the problem of overpayments, which has reached epidemic proportions, is causing great suffering to many civil servants, including many in vulnerable financial circumstances, who have to repay money they do not have,” he said. Civil servants who are overpaid have to return the money within a year or less.

“The extensive underpayments and unprecedented delays in paying people their correct salary once they are appointed or promoted is equally problematic. It’s difficult to identify a single aspect of PeoplePoint activity that has not given rise to problems,” Mullen continued.

Survey respondents also acknowledged that PeoplePoint staff are working under excessively stressful conditions, but they expressed frustration that issues previously dealt with in good time by local HR departments now took much longer to resolve.

Mr Mullen said the project, which was introduced in 2013 to save €2.5 million a year through staff cuts, was launched before it was ready. “The IT systems were not fully developed and service level agreements between PeoplePoint and line departments were unrealistic and lacked penalties.

“The staffing requirements were poorly understood, and the organisation had an overreliance on temporary staff from the outset. Our members in PeoplePoint also report a lack of adequate training for new staff who, with ever-increasing workloads, get little more than ‘on the job’ instruction. As if the system is not difficult enough to navigate, staff aren’t being given the tools to do the job,” he said.

The system is also unable to recognise the attendance patterns of shift workers and others with atypical working arrangements. As a result, these employees have effectively had no HR service in recent years.

Fórsa said it was prompted to conduct its survey on foot of a huge number of complaints from members, as well as senior management’s denial of the systemic nature of the problem. The union has received no response to its request for a meeting with the Civil Service Management Board to discuss the matter.

See the results of Fórsa’s PeoplePoint survey here

Fórsa has said reductions in working time, including the objective of returning public servants to their pre-crisis hours, should be among the priorities in talks on a successor to the Public Service Stability Agreement (PSSA), which expires in 2020.

Speaking at Fórsa’s Civil Service Division conference in Killarney, the chair of the Division, Niall McGuirk, acknowledged limited concessions on the issue in the PSSA, but said members expected the union to seek further progress in future.

The 2013 Haddington Road agreement increased working time for most, though not all, civil and public servants. Eight motions calling for a return to ‘pre-Haddington Road hours’ were submitted to last weeks inaugural civil service divisional conference by Fórsa branches.

Mr McGuirk said this reflected strong feeling on the ground, and an expectation that the union would keep the issue on the agenda in future pay talks. “I fully support the principal that working time must remain a key Fórsa objective, along with other priorities like new entrants, pay equity and wider improvements in income for all the people we represent,” he said.

Mr McGuirk acknowledged that the PSSA included a provision for individuals to opt to return to pre-2013 hours in exchange for a proportionate reduction in pay, as well as a facility to convert some leave into flexitime. The latter measure gives some flexibility to staff facing short-term family commitments.

“These measures help, but they are not a return to the pre-crisis situation. We know that there are competing demands on what can be achieved in negotiations. But working time cannot, and will not, fall off the table. I expect us to send a message to our negotiators that this issue means a lot to very many of our members,” he said.

Unions sought a return to pre-2011 hours in last summer’s negotiations, which resulted in agreement on the PSSA. But Minister Paschal Donohoe and his officials were adamant that they would not do a deal that restored working time lost under previous agreements, saying the additional working time was worth a total of over €583 million a year to the exchequer.

Mr McGuirk also said the recent conversion of the so-called pension levy into an ‘additional pension contribution’ should settle the issue of public service pensions. He said unions had protected the value of pensions in the PSSA by agreeing to the ‘additional pension contribution’ on all earnings above €34,500 a year.

“This is a fair trade-off that should lay the matter of public service pensions to rest. We will be keeping a very careful eye on this over the next number of years, just as we will be supporting demands for better pension provision for all workers, regardless of the sector they happen to be employed in,” he said.

Mr McGuirk noted that unions had successfully taken lower-paid workers out of the pension levy in successive negotiations. In 2009, all earnings above €15,000 were subject to the levy, which averaged 7% of earnings and more for higher-paid staff. By January 2020, that ceiling will have risen to €34,500.

“That means anyone earning below €34,500 will no longer pay the levy, while those earning more will pay the levy on a significantly smaller proportion of their income,” he said.

The full text of Niall McGuirk’s speech to conference is available here 

The civil service is struggling to recruit staff in many areas because salaries are not keeping pace with those available in comparable private sector jobs, according to Fórsa. State bodies are finding it difficult to recruit a wide range of staff including cleaners, solicitors, meteorologists, radio officers, technical agricultural officers, valuers, Oireachtas researchers, translation staff, and special education needs organisers, the union’s Civil Service Division conference was told.

Speaking at Fórsa’s Civil Service divisional conference in Killarney on Friday, official Andy Pike said service quality was being strained because of staff shortages, and he called on civil service management to be given the flexibility to pay staff above the usual entry rates, where necessary, in order to attract suitably qualified staff.

“The problem is starkest in professional and technical areas, but it’s not confined to these specialisms. Some civil service bodies have even struggled to hire cleaners in recent months,” he said.

The union recently identified a range of civil service grades where public bodies are struggling to hire in a submission to the Public Service Pay Commission (PSPC), which is examining recruitment and retention problems in parts of the public service. The submission said a recent competition for permanent civilian posts in Dublin Garda stations attracted so few applicants that it has to be repeated.

The submission also points to ongoing problems recruiting meteorologists. A recent panel for forecasters led to just three posts being filled, while eight candidates refused positions because of low starting salaries. A 2016 competition for special education needs organisers (SENOs) was equally unsuccessful. All but one of 20 qualifying candidates walked away because better deals were available in schools.

“Across the state’s laboratories, law offices and many specialist agencies, the current starting salaries are no longer competitive compared to the private sector labour market for specialist staff,” said Mr Pike. He added that the length of the engineer pay scales was also a barrier to retaining staff, who are no longer prepared to wait almost two decades to reach the top of their pay scale as evidence by the recent loss of scientific staff from the Forensics Services Laboratory.

Mr Pike said starting pay for cleaners working in the Garda training college in Templemore was €9.10 an hour, which is below the legal minimum for private sector contract cleaners. “Further difficulties have been reported recruiting cleaning staff for the Department of the Taoiseach. The low starting salary is not competitive with pay rates in the private sector,” he said.

A motion to the conference said changes to starting pay arrangements introduced in some parts of the civil service in 2010 meant that, in a tightening labour market, management was now trying to recruit new staff at salaries €20,000 below those paid at the height of the economic crisis.

The Public Service Pay Commission’s examination of recruitment and retention issues was one of the measures won by unions in the Public Service Stability Agreement (PSSA). The commission has been asked to establish the extent and nature of recruitment and retention problems and, where they exist, to recommend measures to address them.

The Department of Health is to draft legislation to allow 14,000 carers to benefit from free GP care. The legislation is to provide in law for eligibility for GP services without charge to be extended to all those in receipt of Carer’s Allowance or Carer’s Benefit.

Announcing that he had received Cabinet approval to draft the legislation earlier this month, Minister for Health Simon Harris said, "This Government recognises the need for further supports for those who are caring for the most vulnerable in our society.

“This measure will enable people who are in receipt of full, or half-rate, Carer’s Allowance or Carer’s Benefit to qualify automatically for GP care without fees. Carers willingly give up a great deal to provide care to family members and others, and I hope that this concrete support from the State for their mental and physical wellbeing will help alleviate some of the strain," he said.

Government plans to provide free GP visit cards, and additional spending on respite care, were announced last December.

The measures were welcomed by Family Carers Ireland. However, the family carers advocacy organisation said that, as only one in four carers actually receive Carer’s Allowance - mainly due to the means test - the group has called for all carers in receipt of the Carer’s Support Grant to receive the card, extending the service to 25,000 additional carers.

Further supports and information for carers are available from the HSE here.

Family Carers Ireland website.