IMPACT’s young members’ group will host an event focusing on the cost of living for young workers on Thursday 28th September. The event will take place from 1pm to 6pm, and is free of charge for IMPACT members.

The IMPACT young members’ group is open to all union members aged 35 or under, and seeks to highlight and promote issues of particular relevance to younger members of the union.

The spiralling costs of living in Ireland, including rents/mortgages, childcare, insurance costs and the cost of education, is a huge issue for young workers in Ireland today. This event hopes to highlight some of these issues, call for action, and develop an IMPACT young members’ campaign in this area.

Already this year the group has held a successful young members forum in February and organised the Great IMPACT Quiz in May, which raised €8,000 for World Vision Ireland’s work on the refugee crisis. The group has also held regular monthly meetings.

A light lunch and full dinner will also be provided to all attendees. For more information or to register please contact IMPACT lead organiser Joe O’Connor.

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IMPACT Insights series: film screenings

Following the success of IMPACT’s screening of Before the Flood earlier this year, the IMPACT Insights series continues with special film screenings taking place each month at IMPACT’s Dublin office in Nerney’s Court.

 

The films have each been specially selected as they deal with issues of interest to anyone working or active in the trade union movement. Each screening will include an expert guest speaker.

Each screening commences at 6pm. IMPACT will provide refreshments. If you’d like to attend simply register by contacting Joe O’Connor.

Inequality for All - Thursday, 19th October                    
The acclaimed 2013 documentary that follows former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich as he looks to raise awareness of the country's widening economic gap, directed by Jacob Kornbluth. View trailer.

Speaker: Dr. Aidan Regan, UCD

I, Daniel Blake - Thursday, 7th November 
Described as "a protest cry for common humanity", Legendary director Ken Loach brings his unique cinematic examination to the brutal realities of life in the UK welfare system. View trailer, and watch Mark Kermode's review here. 
      
Speaker: Dr. Mary Murphy, Maynooth University

 

Last month, IMPACT’s Munster SNA branch organized a special event featuring Dr. Temple Grandin, a renowned expert on animal behaviour and husbandry, and an inspiration to tens of thousands of people affected by autism.

Dr Grandin’s experience demonstrates the value of investment in special needs education. Dr Grandin, who addressed 800 people at an event called The World Needs All Kinds of Minds: An Afternoon with Temple Grandin at Cork Institute of Technology on 18th August, was diagnosed with autism in the 1950s, but went on to become an internationally-recognised scientist, speaker and author.

Speaking at the event, Dr Grandin emphasised the importance of educational intervention at the earliest possible stage to help equip children with autism succeed in life and the world of work. “The individuals who will be successful in the workplace are most likely to be the ones who developed good working skills at a young age,” she said.

Union official Barry Cunningham (pictured, seated right) told the audience that Dr Grandin’s story underlined the need for increased investment in Irish special needs education – in particular continuous professional development for SNAs and other educational professionals as called for by the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection in January 2016.

“Dr Grandin’s determination and success are an inspiration to every family that’s touched by autism, and to every school and education professional who works with these special young people. But there is an important lesson for Irish policymakers too, as her experience points to the need for more investment in special needs education. This must include specific training and continuous professional development to ensure that SNAs and other educational professionals are able to provide the best possible educational supports to help children with special needs realise their full potential at work and in society, just as Temple Grandin has famously done,” he said.

Dr Grandin was one of the first people on the autism spectrum to publicly share insights from a personal experience of the condition. Born in 1947, and unable to speak until the age of four, she is now professor of animal science at Colorado State University and a consultant to the livestock industry on animal behavior. She was in Ireland to address a major meat industry conference.

She was diagnosed with autism in the 1950s. Her mother rejected the route of institutionalisation, which was the standard medical recommendation for the condition at the time, and explored different supports and options to develop her daughter’s potential.

IMPACT represents over 8,000 SNAs across Ireland.

 

IMPACT is stepping up its campaign to win pension provision for all school completion programme (SCP) staff. About two-thirds of SCP staff have no occupational pension rights at all, despite a commitment given during the 2015 Lansdowne Road talks.

IMPACT is now taking its campaign for pension justice to national and local politicians in a concerted lobby. And the union’s school completion branch has also achieved an overwhelming mandate for industrial action to underpin the campaign if necessary.

Ireland’s school completion programme has been widely applauded – including in a major study by the Economic and Social Research Institute – for providing effective supports to troubled young people. And it has contributed strongly to improving school attendance and completion among pupils, predominantly in DEIS areas.

There are currently 124 SCP programmes across the country, each with a modest number of project workers managed by a single coordinator. Approximately a third of these programmes are funded directly through Education and Training Boards (ETBs), which means staff have access to the public service pension scheme.

The remaining two-thirds are funded through management committees, and the staff have no occupational pension provision at all.

IMPACT has been highlighting this injustice for a number of years. In 2015, the union won a commitment that it would be addressed through negotiations under the Lansdowne Road agreement. But no progress has been made.

The new Public Service Stability Agreement (PSSA) looks set to gain majority union support when the ICTU Public Services Committee (PSC) meets on 18th September. Voting strength at the PSC reflects each union’s membership in the public service, and strong support in ballots of IMPACT, Siptu, AHCPS and TEEU members have already virtually guaranteed a majority in favour.

The votes of other unions that have recommended acceptance – including the CPSU and PSEU – will likely mean a clear overall majority in favour of the deal. IMPACT members backed the proposed agreement by a margin of 78% to 22% on a 52% turnout, with just five branches voting against the deal.

The PSSA will see the restoration of pay cuts and a significant proportion of the so-called pension levy for the vast majority of public servants, including new entrants. The first pay increase under the deal is due next January.

Announcing the outcome of its ballot in July, IMPACT called for immediate talks on remaining pay iniquities for staff who entered the public service after January 2011. The deal facilitates negotiations on the so-called ‘new entrants’ issue, which saw lower pay scales introduced for staff who joined the public service in 2011 and after. Although the scales were merged in 2013, it still takes ‘new entrants’ two years longer than other public servants to reach the top of their pay scales.

IMPACT believes the PSSA process could result in the removal of two incremental points from most pay scales, bringing faster progress for new entrants, and an equal scale-length for staff who joined the public service before and after 2011.

Separately, the union responded to new CSO figures that showed public service earnings growing faster than private sector wages last year. IMPACT national secretary Bernard Harbor welcomed news that earnings were up across the economy.

“After nearly a decade of pay stagnation, it’s encouraging to see modest pay recovery happening across the economy, although pay adjustments are still lagging behind economic growth projections for 2017 as measured by both GDP and GNP,” he said.

The CSO figures show that the difference between pay recovery in the public and private sectors in the year up to end-June 2017 was almost entirely due to a statistical quirk caused by the employment of temporary census staff in 2016. This deflated the public service figures in 2016, rather than inflating them in 2017.

“Most public servants have simply received a modest pay increase of about €19 a week before tax last April, which is in line with average pay movements in the rest of the economy,” said Harbor.

The Department of Education and Skills has advised institutes of technology to offer permanent contracts to non-teaching fixed-term staff who are currently in “posts which would be considered as permanent positions.”

The advice, which was set out in guidance to IOTs and universities earlier this month, emerged after IMPACT won a commitment to the regularisation of admin, technical, library, support and management posts during the recent pay talks.

The department refers third-level institutions to the fixed-term workers’ legislation, and highlights the distinction between genuine fixed-term or specific-purpose contracts and the filling of permanent posts on a fixed-term basis. “The application of the Act is the minimum standard expected of employers.” it says.

Under the Protection of Employment (Fixed Term Work) Act, employers are only permitted to hire staff on fixed-term contracts when there are legitimate and objective grounds for doing so. Examples include covering for maternity leave or career breaks, and hiring someone for a specific time-limited project.

 

The Government should allocate an extra €125 million in next year’s Budget, and at least €625 million extra over the next five years, to ensure that Ireland meets the OECD average spend on early childhood care and education by 2022, according to IMPACT. In a costed pre-Budget submission, the union also called for two months’ paid parental leave to be introduced from next year, at an extra cost of €84 million.

The union also wants fees paid by parents to be capped as a condition of public funding of early childhood providers in future.

Government spending of just 0.1% of GDP on early childhood education currently puts Ireland at the bottom of the OECD league table. As a result, “Irish parents pay some of the highest childcare costs in the world, while most of those working within early education don’t even earn a living wage,” according to the IMPACT submission.

The union wants to see the negotiation and implementation of agreed salary scales for early education staff to boost professionalisation of the sector. IMPACT organiser Lisa Connell (pictured) says international research demonstrates a clear link between salaries and the quality of early education experienced by children. But Irish workers generally experience low pay and poor working conditions.

“Average pay in the sector currently stands at €10.27 an hour, with a €1 premium for graduates. It is inevitable that some children experience poor quality early education when the services are provided by poorly qualified and poorly paid staff. Budget 2018 can start to change that by signalling the necessary move towards a graduate-led workforce with payment of an agreed salary scale as a condition of public funding,” she said.

IMPACT says simply providing higher capitation for higher qualifications isn’t the solution to low pay as there is no guarantee that higher capitation fees would be passed on in wages.

The pre-Budget submission also seeks a commitment to meet the UNICEF early childhood spending target of 1% of GNP within ten years. The union also urges improved quality in the sector and says public funding should be withdrawn from providers who fail to meet standards. The Programme for Government includes a commitment to review the early care inspection regime, but this has not yet been implemented.

Download a copy of the pre budget submission HERE.

Related (Audio) :
Audioblog: The Early Impact campaign in early education (via Soundcloud)

IMPACT is in the process of preparing its submission for the Government's consultation process on measures to close the gender pay gap in Ireland. The consultation process was launched by the Department of Jobs Enterprise and Innovation, in partnership with the Department of Justice and Equality.

IMPACT's submission will demonstrate that the union has been working, in several different ways, to close the gender pay gap. In the first instance, it has been doing this by pursuing pay improvements for its membership, 75% of whom are women.

IMPACT’s ‘Early IMPACT’ early years campaign is another good example of an area in which IMPACT is placing a particular emphasis on tackling the gender pay gap. Early Education is a professional arena in which 98% of employees are women, and is a sector characterised by low rates of pay and substandard working conditions.

The high cost of childcare itself contributes to the wider societal gender pay gap by requiring that parents – most often mothers – either not work outside the home or work part-time. In seeking and advocating for more investment in the early years sector, IMPACT is fighting to close the gender pay gap on two fronts – both for the women who deliver the vast majority of childcare services and for women who, in being unable to afford childcare, are forced to reduce their income.

IMPACT has also put an emphasis on the gender pay gap in the local authority sector. The union commissioned an interim report by Camille Loftus on the issue of gender inequality in local authorities. Based on the findings of the research, IMPACT criticized Government for failing to collect details of the gender pay gap and gender-based occupational segregation in local councils, and to require local authorities to publish such data.

The union also accused local authorities of failing to implement their own family-friendly employment policies, the implementation of which would help remove barriers to women’s career advancement in the sector.

IMPACT’s 2017 local government divisional conference passed motions condemning the erosion of family friendly policies in local authorities, and calling on the union to initiate a nationwide campaign on the issue.

Another area in which IMPACT has placed an emphasis on the gender pay gap is in the union’s work with regard to low pay. IMPACT has been a vocal member of the campaign for a national living wage. Given that 73% of people currently on the minimum wage are women, the introduction of a living wage would have a major impact on the gender pay gap.

IMPACT has also been campaigning vigorously for the introduction of gender pay gap reporting laws. This campaign has included online elements, traditional lobbying, the drafting and partial passage of legislation and a motion to the Irish Congress of Trade Union’s 2017 conference.

IMPACT believes that mandatory gender pay gap reporting is the single most effective tool at our disposal in the fight to close the gap.
IMPACT’s submission will detail the work that the union has done and will make the case for gender pay transparency.