Unions lodge community sector pay claim by Niall Shanahan
The unions also issued a joint letter to the Taoiseach, which said that while the Government is the principal funder of the sector, it has consistently denied any responsibility for the terms and conditions of employment which exist within it.
Fórsa, the INMO, SIPTU and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) are to a lodge a pay claim for thousands of workers employed in the voluntary and community sector. The unions are also seeking to establish an appropriate collective bargaining forum for the sector where pay, terms and funding can be properly established.
The unions say the pay claim, set at 3%, would bring tens of thousands of workers in the community and voluntary sector in line with pay patterns across all sectors, including the pay provisions in the Building Momentum public service agreement.
Community and voluntary sector staff provide a huge range of community-based services in health, including care for older people and people with disabilities, services for people with addiction, homeless services and a range of services to children, as well as community development, local employment services, jobs clubs, homework clubs and family resource centres, providing services for “everyone from nought to a hundred years of age.”
The unions launched a joint campaign on Tuesday (9th November) Valuing Care/Recognising Work, which aims to find “a fair way forward” for workers in the community and voluntary sector.
They confirmed that the vast majority of workers providing these services have not had any pay improvements since the collapse of social partnership in 2009, and the subsequent decoupling of the sector from pay provisions included in public sector pay agreements.
Speaking at the launch, community development worker Roisin Ryder said staff did complex and skilled work.
“We need to attract skilled and talented people but there’s no pension or competitive pay scale. There’s been an exodus from the community sector to the HSE, and why wouldn’t they? They can get better pay and a pension elsewhere,” she said.
Fórsa assistant general secretary Catherine Keogh said that if political leaders are serious about valuing workers, and about providing care and services where they are needed most, they must fund them properly.
“We need to stop the annual cycle where unions are forced to agitate to ensure the appropriate funding is in place to ensure these services are maintained. Employers in the sector are witnessing a flight of workers - up to a third of their staff each year - which has the knock-on effect of creating additional recruitment costs. The loss of experienced staff has an immeasurable negative impact on the continuity of care they provide,” she said.
Workers in the sector say that the Covid-19 pandemic has led to a substantial increase in demand for services provided by the sector, but no increase in the annual grant funding available to organisations that provide services. For example, addiction services have witnessed a huge increase in referrals, but are working with the same level of resources available prior to the onset of the pandemic.
The unions also issued a joint letter to the Taoiseach, which said that while the Government is the principal funder of the sector, it has consistently denied any responsibility for the terms and conditions of employment which exist within it.
“The adoption of this position by successive administrations has led directly to a highly dysfunctional industrial relations environment where recommendations by the Labour Court and other employment law bodies remain unimplemented because the relevant government department will not fund the employer to comply with same.”
Union leaders have sought a meeting with the Taoiseach on the issues raised by the campaign. They added: "The only viable and sustainable industrial relations solution to this claim, and the further multitude of industrial relations issues which bedevil the sector, is through the creation of a collective bargaining platform whereby terms and conditions of employment can be addressed and resolved.”
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