Community employment (CE) supervisors have suspended a planned five days of strike action, scheduled to commence last.

Fórsa’s Services and Enterprises Division will meet for its biennial divisional conference in Sligo next Thursday (23rd May). Head of Division Angela Kirk says motions to conference reflect the wider Fórsa concerns about pay, organisation and unresolved questions around Brexit.

Fórsa has disputed Government estimates that restoring pre-crisis working time in the public service and non-commercial semi-state organisations could cost the Exchequer over €600 million a year. The union’s Senior General Secretary Designate Kevin Callinan said the figure was at least 50% higher than Government estimates when the additional time was introduced in 2013.

Public service management should work with unions to ensure that the introduction of new technologies does not lead to job losses or poorer services, according to Fórsa.

Most older workers will be unable to meet the target of 40 years’ worth of contributions to qualify for a full rate pension, which is set out in plans for pension ‘auto-enrolment’.

Providing affordable, high-quality broadband to rural Ireland would have been simpler, cheaper and quicker if the State’s telecoms infrastructure had remained in public ownership, according to top Fórsa official Angela Kirk.

A petition calling for the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to back a new social contract has been launched by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).