Fórsa's youth network is hosting this year’s Fórsa Quiz Night in Dublin on 12th December, with proceeds going towards Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI), a non-profit organisation that supports the trans community in Ireland. The Fórsa Choir will hold its inaugural performance at this event. 

The quiz commences at 5.30pm and costs €100 for a table of four. The youth network has asked branches to either take a table or donate €100 to support this worthy cause.

You can get further details HERE.

To register a table, contact the youth committee HERE, or send cheques (made out to the Transgender Equality Network Ireland) to Michael Kerrigan, Fórsa, Nerney’s Court, Dublin DO1 R2C5.

Fórsa has reached an agreement that will see 450 agency staff in Tusla moved onto fixed-term contracts. The deal covers about two-thirds of existing agency staff in the child and family agency, including social work, social care, family support and administrative grades.

A small number of the 450 – those covering for maternity leave – will be placed on specified-purpose contracts.

The union has also secured commitments that existing panels will not be affected, and that permanent posts will continue to be filled from existing panels.

Tusla has also agreed that, for admin grades, agency staff will only be deployed at entry level in future.

Fórsa official Chris Cully welcomed the outcome, but called for tighter controls on the future use of agency staff. “This is good news for 450 workers and their colleagues in Tusla. We now want to see an agreed protocol developed for future appointments,” she said.

The union also wants to see close monitoring of transfers and panel appointments to ensure that management follows through on assurances about avoiding existing staff displacement.

Tusla revealed that it currently deploys over 670 agency staff. The lions share are in social work and social care grades, though over 180 are in admin. Around 125 clerical officers are likely to be among those converted to temporary status.

The HSE has agreed to meet Fórsa over its chief executive Paul Reid’s public statement on the need for “targeted” voluntary redundancies among “management” posts sometime next year.

This comes after the union wrote demanding that the agency conform to public service agreements. In a response to Fórsa’s head of health, Éamonn Donnelly, the HSE’s national director of human resources conceded that management would abide by its obligations to consult and engage with the union.

Éamonn acted on foot of an article in the Sunday Business Post, in which Reid said he was engaging yet more external consultants to look at HSE structures.

In his letter to Mr Reid, Éamonn pointed out that the union had always abided by public service agreements, which require employers to consult with staff representatives before imposing significant changes to working conditions.

He said he expected the HSE to do the same. ”By any measure, redundancies are significant, both for the ‘targeted’ staff and those left to take up the workload. Fórsa fully expects [the HSE] to conduct business that directly affects workers’ terms and conditions through agreed industrial relations processes,” he said.

The union offered to meet Mr Reid on the issue.“The last time the HSE offered voluntary redundancies, it was left with significant holes in corporate knowledge, including in key and senior roles. It then had to fill the gaps by hiring more managers.

“In his interview, Mr Reid put forward no evidence-based rationale for claiming there are too many managers and admin staff in this interview, and it’s disappointing to see the head of the organisation taking to the media to criticise staff in this way.

"And it’s certainly odd to read that the HSE has decided to pursue voluntary redundancies before it hires expensive external consultants to look, yet again, at ‘organisational design’,” said Éamonn.

The HSE has agreed to Fórsa’s demand for a union-management assessment group to ensure that effective clinical governance in health and social care professions is maintained in new community health structures currently being tested in pilot ‘network learning sites.’

There will also be joint feedback groups in each of the nine sites.

The development came after the union’s head of health Éamonn Donnelly insisted the process was necessary to ensure that senior health and social care professional (HSCP) managers maintained a “direct input into line management” in the professions.

This is important because the new community healthcare organisation structures being piloted will see some HSCPs reporting directly to generic network managers rather than heads of discipline.

Fórsa has restored full cooperation with the nine learning sites following agreement that the assessment group will be constituted in time to start work in two months’ time.

In a related development, a review of HSCP career pathways will get underway in earnest under an agreement linked to the union’s cooperation with the learning sites.

The process will consider career progression against the background of changed working environments since 2003. It will take account of career structures, advanced practise, clinical specialisms and advancement from basic to senior grades.

It is being conducted by an independent chair, overseen by a joint union-management group consisting of four people from each side. Two of the seats on each side will be rotational to allow for inputs from different professions.

The gap between earnings in the public and private sectors narrowed between 2015 and 2018, despite the fact that significant restoration of crisis-era pay cuts took place in that period. A new report from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) found that, in those years, the pay differential ranged from -3.8% to +7.1%, depending on how it’s measured.

Meanwhile, pay rise projections from the union-backed Nevin Economic Research Institute (NERI) suggest that the gap may narrow again. It predicts average economy-wide pay increases of 3.6% this year. This is significantly ahead of increases under the Public Service Stability Agreement, which come in at just over 1.75% in 2019.

NERI predicts average economy-wide pay increases of almost 4% next year.

Earlier this year, Fórsa general secretary Kevin Callinan argued that the underlying assumptions of the PSSA, which governs pay across the public sector, should be reviewed to take account of lost spending power, growth rates, and pay movements in the wider economy.

In recent months he has been leading public service unions in talks with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (DPER) ahead of negotiations on new pay arrangements to replace the deal when it expires at the end of next year.

The CSO research shows significantly different public-private pay differentials for men and women. The differential for male workers in the public and private sectors ranges from +1% to -10.8% depending on how it’s calculated. In other words, some methodologies show male public servants earning over 10% less than comparable private sector workers.

Women public servants earn between 3.3% and 15.8% more than their private sector equivalents.

The CSO study sets out a range of estimates of the wage differential to reflect different ways of measuring the pay gap. Unlike the data it produces each quarter, the studies take account of relevant factors like employees’ length of service, occupation and education, as well as the size of employments.

They look at a range of methodologies to reflect the fact that economists disagree on the best method to measure the public-private pay gap.

CSO statistician Morgan O'Donnell says comparing pay in the public and private sectors is not a straightforward task. “Complexity arises as the two sectors comprise of a variety of different industries, occupations and workers with differing education, experience and skill sets," he said.

Read the CSO report HERE.

The biggest increases in the HSE’s bill for agency staff, in the year to June 2019, were in the two categories of health and social care professionals (HSCP) and central support, which includes admin.

While overall agency staff spending rose by just under 9%, the figure was 23% for HSCPs and a whopping 48% in central support.

Fórsa official Chris Cully said the figures gave the lie to management claims that there were no recruitment and retention difficulties in the health professions.

“In its submission to the Public Service Pay Commission, management denied there were recruitment and retention difficulties in Ireland’s health and social care professions. Yet it’s spending over €14 million on agency staff to provide HSPC services,” she said.

Chris added that the larger spending increase on agency staff in central support was proof that so-called front-line services depended heavily on much-maligned admin workers.

Overall, HSE agency costs rose from just over €190 million in the 12 months to June 2018 to €207 million in the following year, despite pledges to reduce agency spending.

A tech company that ‘gender-proofed’ its recruitment adverts saw an 80% increase in the number of women recruited into technical positions, according to a new report on female participation in senior management roles.

The study, from employers’ body Ibec, recommends gender-proofing job ads, as research shows that their choice of words can encourage or deter female applicants. Words like ‘enthusiastic’ and ‘fearless’ tend to attract men, while words such as ‘transparent’ and ‘in touch with’ are more attractive to women.

The report found a severe lack of female participation in senior management roles across most sectors of the economy. Drawing on a Central Statistics Office study of companies with over 250 employees, it found that only 11.5% of chief executive officers were female.

The Ibec report compared female participation rates across various levels of management from 2001 and 2018. It found increased numbers of women in senior management functions in HR and personnel, finance and accounting, and customer service roles.

But women are still largely absent from management functions in manufacturing, distribution and engineering, where they are poorly represented at all levels.

While the overall number of women in senior management roles has increased since 2001, they are concentrated in particular sectors. The Ibec report traces this to schools. It highlights the lack of opportunities to take subjects like mechanical drawing or physics in all-girls schools, or home economics in all-boys schools.

It also said that women at lower management levels faced barriers to accessing middle and senior management positions. This means that hiring more women at lower management levels, and incentivising them to enter male-dominated sectors may not necessarily translate into greater representation in middle and senior management roles.

The lack of women in senior roles and in certain occupational sectors is one of the factors feeding the gender pay gap. Fórsa has highlighted this in its #ClockedOut campaign, which is advocating legislation to introduce mandatory gender pay gap reporting.

Fórsa is hosting public meetings on its campaign for a four day working week in Limerick and Galway next week. The events are part of a series of regional meetings taking place following the launch of 4DWI (Four Day Week Ireland) in September.

They come on foot of another boost for the international campaign for a shorter working week, as Microsoft Japan announced it had wrapped up a successful four-day week pilot, which saw productivity rise by 40%.

Fórsa is part of the 4DWI coalition of businesses, trade unions, environmentalists, academics and NGOs established to campaign for shorter working time in all sectors of the economy. The initiative is the Irish leg of an international campaign to establish a four-day week without reductions in pay or productivity.

The new coalition says reduced working time is better for business, better for workers, better for women, and better for the environment. 

The campaign aims to achieve “a gradual, steady, managed transition to a shorter working week for all workers in the private and public sectors.”

Fórsa campaigns director Joe O’Connor said the campaign pledges to promote the concept of a four-day week with Irish businesses. “We’re also offering to those who trial the approach by drawing on the experience of companies like Galway-based recruitment firm ICE and New Zealand’s Perpetual Guardian, which are already reaping the benefits of introducing a four-day week for their staff,” he said.

Orla O’Connor of the National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI), Oisin Coghlan of Friends of the Earth, and ICE chief executive Margaret Cox will speak at the meetings, which take place in Limerick on Monday 25th November and Galway on Thursday 28th.

Meanwhile, Microsoft Japan announced that productivity rose by 40% when it tested a four-day week in the summer. Its ‘work-life choice challenge 2019’ saw the tech giant grant its 2,300-strong workforce five Fridays off in a row, without decreasing their pay.

The company said the experiment led to more efficient meetings and happier workers, while staff said they eliminated distractions in the workplace in order to maintain the previous levels of productivity. The pilot also reduced electricity usage by 23%.

Microsoft Japan is the latest in a growing number of firms experimenting with reduced working hours. As well as Perpetual Guardian and ICE, Uniqlo Japan has also trialled a flexible time option to accommodate an extra day off while maintaining the number of hours put in per week.

The Limerick meeting takes place at the Fórsa office, Roxborough Road at 7.30pm on Monday 25th November.

The Galway meeting takes place at the union’s Galway office at Sean Mulvoy Business Park at 7.30pm on Thursday 28th November.

For more information about the campaign visit fourdayweek.ie/

Delegates at Fórsa’s Traveller Equality Network heard that members of the Travelling community feel they have to hide their identity in their workplace because they fear discrimination.

The event, which took place in Sligo last week, included discussions on the need for workplace champions, positive affirmative actions and employment quotas to improve employment opportunities for Travellers in the civil and public services.

Trade union members, community activists and members of the Travelling community heard James O'Leary of Involve say that Ireland's 30,000 members of the Traveller community are a young population, averaging 22.4 years.

Half the Traveller population is under the age of 20.

He outlined the disproportionately high level of unemployment within the community. Only 19.8% of Travellers are in employment, while only 13% complete their second level education.

A safe space

Despite his lifelong activism on racism and anti-discrimination, Fórsa’s head of education Andy Pike said: “I'm part of the problem. My understanding of Traveller issues is very small.

“This is the beginning for Fórsa, bear with us. There is no policy document to dust off and revise. Our starting point is the creation of this safe space, through the union’s equality network,” he said.

Fórsa vice president Margaret Coughlan spoke of her personal experiences getting to know members of the Travelling community, and about the need to break down social barriers.

Margaret and other delegates gave strong support to the creation of workplace initiatives, in particular the need for champions or advocates for Travellers in the workplace.

Bernadette Maughan, a Fórsa member and manager of Sligo Traveller Support Group, spoke about the systematic exclusion of the Travelling community, "There is a blind spot there. We're used to it, it’s always there. This network is a great innovation, but it shows how much still needs to be done."

Housing row

Bernadette also spoke about the recent attacks on Traveller families in the local area.

In a follow up letter to the head of Sligo County Council, Andy raised the union’s concerns about recent problems experienced by a Traveller family where they were allocated housing from the council, and subsequent vandalism attacks on the house occurred. He said the provision of public services like housing should not be influenced by the race or ethnicity of service users.

“Fórsa members working across our public services maintain the highest professional standards when carrying out their duties and we note that the council's decision on allocating accommodation remained in place despite what appears to have been strong representations made by others.

“We commend the council for standing firm on this issue and trust that any attacks or damage to housing allocated to Travellers will be fully investigated,” he said.

Discrimation

Fórsa official Richy Carrothers outlined the union’s experience intervening on discriminatory treatment of Traveller workers at the Leitrim Development Company last year. “We discovered the company had been paying Traveller workers just €5 per hour, significantly less than the statutory minimum wage.

“When they were challenged about this, management raised the hourly rate but cut the hours of affected staff. We discovered serious issues of concern about the treatment of Traveller workers there.

“These were staff employed to advance the work and support for Travellers across Leitrim, and who were treated in the most shameful way by their employer,” he said.

Richy said the issue had been resolved following high-level talks but the episode served to highlight the enormous work that still needs to be done to ensure that Travellers are not discriminated against in the workplace.

Women experience greater levels of job satisfaction than men. That’s according to new research carried out by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).

A survey of 48,000 workers across 28 EU countries found differences in job preferences between men and women that were linked to rates of satisfaction.

The study found that men prioritised career progression, pay, benefits, and the reputation of the organisation. But women placed more importance on being interested in the work, work-life balance, skills match, gaining experience, job security and proximity to home.

Previous research has indicated that the gender satisfaction gap is down to women’s lower career expectations. However, these new findings prove it’s actually the difference in initial priorities that creates the divide.

Liking the work and having a good work-life balance are the two preferences most strongly associated with job satisfaction. Because women prioritise these factors when choosing a position, the gender divide is then created.

Therefore, the campaign for a four-day week could actually improve job satisfaction for everyone by creating a greater work-life balance through the reduction of working time.

Read more about that HERE.

Read more about the ESRI research HERE.

Fórsa general secretary Kevin Callinan has sought a meeting with Tánaiste and Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney to discuss the union’s concerns about the escalating violence against social leaders and trade union activists in Colombia.

The rate of murders of social and trade union leaders – already among the worst in the world – has increased significantly since the present Government was elected in 2018.

The union wants the Irish Government to use its diplomatic relationship with Bogotá to put pressure on its government to fully implement the three-year-old Havana Peace Accord.

The move came on the eve of a Colombian national strike over harmful economic reforms, public service cuts, and lack of compliance with public sector agreements.

In a message of solidarity to Colombian unions and civil society organisations involved in the strike, Fórsa pledged to continue to work to support the full implementation of the Colombian peace process.

The union has participated significantly in the ‘peace monitor mission’ organised by Justice for Colombia. This initiative is jointly funded and supported by trade unions and social justice groups in Ireland and Britain, including Fórsa which has given support through its member-funded developing world fund.

Along with other unions, Fórsa has expressed dismay at the persistent failure of the Colombian Government to deliver on the Havana Peace Accord.

Workers lose over €13,000, plus benefits like free travel and the fuel allowance, every time the state pension age is raised by a year. And it costs an additional €11,500 if they have a dependent spouse, according to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU).

ICTU, which has called this the “biggest ever cut to the social safety net for working people,” is calling on the Government to reverse its decision to increase the pension age again in 2021.

If implemented, plans to increase the age at which we’re eligible for the State pension to 67 in 2021 and 68 in 2028 will place Ireland at the worst end of international norms.

ICTU says this is unnecessary, not least because Ireland has one of the youngest populations in Europe.

The threshold last rose from 65 to 66 in 2014.

Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) general secretary Patricia King paid tribute to Dunnes Stores staff at an event to mark the 35th anniversary of their strike against apartheid in South Africa.

The strike began in July 1984 when Mary Manning was suspended for refusing to sell a grapefruit after her union had backed a boycott of South African goods. Her shop steward, Karen Gearon, ordered a walk-out, and eight more young workers downed tools.

The dispute was to last for two years and nine months, during which the young workers experienced employer hostility, Gardaí harassment, public condemnation by the Catholic Church, and scant support from politicians or even trade unions.

But they gained international attention in 1985 after the South African government deported them from Johannesburg airport eight hours after they arrived at the invitation of anti-apartheid campaigner Bishop Desmond Tutu.

Later that year, two of the strikers were invited to address a UN special committee against Apartheid. In 1987, Ireland became the first west European country to ban South African imports.

“On that day in 1984, none of those workers believed that they had embarked on a particularly lonely road to take on the Irish establishment, make international labour history, and win,” said Patricia.