Fórsa is to seek clarity on civil service probation policies after an EU Directive on Transport and Predictable Working Conditions was transposed into Irish law in December 2022.

The directive seeks to bring additional transparency to the terms of employment for workers in several areas, including precarious working, fixed term contracts and probationary periods.

Irish civil service workers are currently expected to spend twelve months on probation when appointed, but Ireland is somewhat of an outlier in this regard. There is evidence that probation periods across a range of sectors in Ireland is longer than in other EU countries. The new directive recognises this and sets out to reduce standard probation to six months, but for public service workers, it states that their probation shall not exceed twelve months.

Fórsa official Seán Carabini explained that Fórsa is now taking a claim to the Civil Service General Council to seek to have the standard civil service probationary period reduced from twelve months to six months on this basis.

“The directive indicates that probationary periods of longer than six months should be the exception as opposed to the rule, and states that a person moving to a new position shouldn’t be subject to ‘prolonged insecurity’,” he said.  

When asked if this will impact anyone who is currently serving on probation, he said it was too early to say.

“We’re only beginning the conversation with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (DPER) on the matter. It will be interesting, though, to see how the conversation develops especially given that we have, in effect, two different types of probation for civil service workers. Legally, new entrant probation is a different thing to promotion probation. These things will have to be teased out. But the first order of priority is to establish the DPER position on the matter and take things from there,” he said.

Seán stressed that the union’s power to negotiate effectively on these issues is directly related to membership density, and urged new civil service workers to join Fórsa.

“For us to be able to make these representations on behalf of probationers, it is vitally important that they join Fórsa. If there is a new civil service worker in your office, get them to join. It’s on all of us to recruit new members.

“Probation is a very dangerous time for workers because it is during probation that they have the fewest employment rights. Workers shouldn’t be subjected to this for longer than is absolutely necessary. The more members we have, the more bargaining power we will have to protect new civil service workers during their probation,” he said

Seán also highlighted the proposed Civil Service Bill that sets out to change laws governing civil service workers and called on Government to “be serious about minimising precarious working conditions”.

“Let’s not forget that the government is also trying to introduce a new civil service bill that would make it easier to fire civil service workers by downgrading the responsibility for firing from Secretary General to lower grades," he said.

"If the Irish government is serious about minimising precarious working conditions, it can send a very clear signal by agreeing to reduce probationary terms and not adopting the new proposed Civil Service Bill. I still find it remarkable that after a period when our civil service workers stepped up to the plate and kept a country going during a pandemic that there are still those who are hell bent on bringing in a metric that would measure civil service efficiency in terms of how easy it is to fire someone. I certainly don’t want to see a time where number of staff fired is considered a ‘tick’ on the PMDS form of a senior manager or as a ‘good’ statistic on a Department’s annual report. Because that’s precisely the road that this Bill sets us on,” he said.

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