Irish mothers aged 25 to 44 earn 14% less than their male counterparts, and a massive 31% less than women without children, according to a new international survey published last week. The analysis, by recruitment company Glassdoor, found that Irish mothers suffered the biggest pay gap when compared with 18 west European countries and the USA.

Surprisingly, Which Countries in Europe Have the Best Gender Equality in the Workplace? found that, on average, childless Irish women aged between 25 and 44 earn 17.5% more than their male counterparts. But the picture changes radically once they become mothers.

The research suggests that the high cost of childcare contributes to the huge pay penalty that Irish-based mothers experience. Ireland spends just 0.2% of GDP on childcare, compared to an OECD average of 0.8%.

As a result, the average family in Ireland spends 40% of its income on childcare, compared with just 12% across the OECD. With childcare costs consuming such a large proportion of earnings, mothers are often effectively forced into part-time work. Or they leave the workforce altogether.

This has a huge impact on average earnings.

IMPACT recently warned that the issue of childcare funding had fallen off the political agenda since the February general election. The union’s deputy general secretary Kevin Callinan said it barely appeared on the priority lists drawn up by the “mainly middle-aged men” involved in discussions on the make-up of the new Government.

 “Irish parents face among the highest childcare costs in Europe, while staff in the sector, including well-qualified professionals, are among the lowest paid in our economy. Early years staff, including well-qualified workers, can earn as little as €5,150 a year in an increasingly-casualised sector,” he said.

Read Lughan Deane’s blog on the motherhood pay penalty.

Kevin’s statement followed newspaper speculation that the Government is considering special pay deals for certain groups.

Kevin said IMPACT’s priority was a “fair and balanced” unwinding of the ‘FEMPI’ legislation, which imposed public service pay cuts. “Politicians of virtually every party now agree that we are enjoying better than expected economic growth. If this continues, IMPACT will expect an acceleration of the income recovery that finally got underway with the Lansdowne Road agreement," he said.

The conference backed a motion calling for income recovery in the public service, the voluntary sector, and in viable commercial enterprises in the private and state sectors.

No longer in reverse

Outgoing IMPACT president Jerry King insisted that talks on a successor to the Lansdowne Road agreement must begin within 12 months, before the current agreement expires. “FEMPI will need to be unwound at a faster pace, with accelerated pay restoration for all public servants. The workers’ bus may only be in first gear, but we are no longer in reverse,” he said.

IMPACT also said unions must be involved in the establishment of the proposed Public Service Pay Commission. IMPACT general secretary Shay Cody called for an overall approach to pay bargaining that covers every public service grade and profession.

He said any new system must be based on negotiated pay rounds that could be accepted or rejected by membership ballots, not the imposition of recommendations by independent pay commissions as occurs in the UK.

He also called for a single body to conduct periodic reviews of public service grades that experience significant changes in responsibilities or specific labour market challenges, including recruitment and retention difficulties.

Meanwhile, the conference called for the ‘living wage,’ currently set at €11.50 an hour, to be the absolute minimum in the public service. IMPACT official Angela Kirk said the Government’s “meagre” minimum wage target of €10.50 an hour over the next five years fell well short of a living wage.

Related RTÉ report: IMPACT call for acceleration of pay restoration.

Residential care workers and night supervising staff at the Oberstown detention centre in north county Dublin will conduct four-hour work stoppages every Tuesday in June, in a dispute over safety. IMPACT says staff and residents at the centre are exposed to daily risk of violent assault.

The Oberstown campus currently caters for 48 young people, including a mix of vulnerable offenders and violent criminals with multiple convictions for serious offences. The industrial action comes against the background of a high and growing number of attacks on staff since the expansion of the centre to facilitate the transfer of offenders from the prison service.

IMPACT official Tom Hoare said recent figures revealed over 100 violent incidents in Oberstown last year, almost half of which were classed as ‘critical’. Critical assaults and injuries necessitated over 3,000 employee sick days, involving 65 staff members.

“A series of policy decisions has left Oberstown care workers doing the work of prison staff with the facilities and equipment of a residential care home. The campus is badly designed, with inadequate safety equipment and procedures to deal with a mix of vulnerable young people and violent offenders. The result is a daily risk of serious assault, which leaves many of the staff literally in fear of their lives as they leave for work each day,” he said.

The union has also highlighted problems with staff recruitment and retention. Coupled with absences due to assaults, these have left the facility understaffed and incapable of dealing safely with the numbers of offenders in the unit.

A recent expansion and refurbishment of the complex was badly planned and implemented, resulting in a totally unsafe living and working environment, while staff are denied appropriate personal protection and safety equipment.

Pat Fallon of IMPACT’s Sligo branch was elected as union president at last week’s biennial delegate conference in Killarney. Delegates also elected eight other officers to the union's Central Executive Committee.

The conference also elected eight other officers to the Central Executive Committee, which is the union’s most senior decision-making body after the conference itself.

The newly elected officers are:

• Senior vice president: Paddy Quinn (CE Supervisors’ branch).
• Vice president: Michael Barry (Cork branch).
• Vice president: Margaret Coughlan (Wicklow Health branch).
• Vice president: Paul O’Halloran (Dublin City branch).
• Honorary secretary: Alan Duffy (Civil Service No.1 branch).
• Honorary treasurer: Kevin O’Malley (Kerry branch).
• Honorary equal opportunities officer: Patricia Fanning (SNA North Dublin-North Leinster branch).
• Honorary health and safety officer: Mark Wynne (Municipal Employees’ branch).

The CEC is made up of the nine officers (elected at the union’s biennial delegate conference), representatives of each of the union’s six divisions (elected at the divisional conferences), and the immediate past president. A small number of senior staff attend CEC meetings, but they are not allowed to vote.

The protest is being supported by homelessness charities, along with IMPACT and other union organisations like SIPTU and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.

Last week, IMPACT’s biennial delegate conference reasserted the union’s support for urgent solutions to the homelessness crisis. The union has been campaigning on the issue since its September 2015 homelessness conference, 'A Roof Is a Right.’

At last year's ICTU conference, IMPACT proposed a motion calling for a range of measures to tackle the housing crisis, including the regulation of rents through an indexation system similar to those in other European countries.

Saturday’s protest will put pressure on the new Government to implement these and other policies to deal with homelessness.

You can also support the protest on Facebook.

Over 8,000 members entered the draw.

Cornmarket also presented i-pads to two lucky runners-up – Deirdre Feeney of the Sligo branch and Linda Harley of the Education and Training Boards branch.

The conference authorised the IMPACT executive to continue and conclude negotiations with the CPSU and PSEU. If those negotiations are successful, the final proposals for the creation of a new union will be put to separate ballots of members of the three unions in 2017.

Identical conference motions were passed by large majorities at recent delegate conferences of the PSEU and CPSU.

Agreement on the broad structure of the proposed new organisation has already been reached, and the next stage of talks is expected to finesse this and agree the text of a rulebook for the new union. A document, called New Union Project, which sets out the broad structure of a new union, was circulated at the conference.

IMPACT general secretary Shay Cody told delegates: “The new union project is a proposal to combine the strength of over 80,000 members in the three unions, which represent workers in the public service, the commercial sector and state agencies. The document sets out a proposed structure, which would ensure that a new union is democratically accountable and better able to defend and advance our members’ interests at a time when they are facing new challenges, with collective bargaining under attack in some parts of our economy.”

The pay improvements are to be backdated to the beginning of 2016 in a deal that requires the airport unions to resume negotiations on the ‘Better Together’ initiative to improve industrial relations and introduce a new DAA pay model.

IMPACT official Johnny Fox said the deal was the result of negotiations and intensive lobbying of DAA by the union’s IAESA branch, which represents middle managers in the company. “The full reversal of pay cuts from the austerity era is welcome news for our members in DAA, and a boost for the union’s wider campaign for pay recovery,” he said.

Last week, delegates at IMPACT’s biennial conference backed motions calling on the union to prioritise income recovery across the public service, voluntary sector, and viable commercial enterprises in the private and state sectors.

IMPACT has published a guide on the workforce planning process for civil service branch representatives. The publication focusses on workforce planning for specialist and technical grades in the civil service.

IMPACT national secretary Andy Pike said workforce planning typically sets out the current and future staffing requirements and structure for civil service departments and agencies.

“Civil service departments and agencies are now able to make decisions about staff recruitment within their overall budget allocation. While this brings an end to the recruitment moratorium, departments still have to stay within their allocated budgets,” he said.

Andy has advised branches to liaise with their union official on industrial relations matters and agree how best to address issues around workforce planning, skill mix and recruitment within their specific service.

IMPACT is to push for postnatal depression to be recognised as a pregnancy-related illness in public service sick leave regulations, after delegates at the union’s conference overwhelmingly backed a motion calling for the condition to be treated the same way as other pregnancy-related conditions.

Delegates at the conference heard that postnatal depression is not currently recognised as a pregnancy related illness, which means far less paid leave is available to women who suffer from the condition.

A motion from the union’s South Dublin branch called this “unjust, unfair and entirely unacceptable,” and the union was mandated to take steps to win parity of treatment for those who suffer post-natal depression.

Una Maguire of the South Dublin said she knew “a lot of people in her workplace affected by postnatal depression who are not covered under the current sick leave scheme."

IMPACT is currently engaged with management in a Labour Court-proposed review of the operation of new sick leave measures, which were introduced in 2014.

IMPACT has written to social protection minister Leo Varadkar seeking a meeting to discuss his plans to replace the JobBridge scheme. The union welcomed the minister’s announcement that JobBridge will go, but wants to share its proposals for alternatives that are fair and relevant to current labour market conditions.

The union had previously called for the programme to be dissolved and replaced with targeted initiatives aimed at specific groups including early school leavers, graduates, and the long-term unemployed. It also called for internships to be better regulated and monitored.

In a statement last month, the union’s deputy general secretary Kevin Callinan said there had been many reports of the improper use of JobBridge, including in the health, local government and education sectors.

“Many of those who welcomed the scheme in 2011 have been troubled by the recurring reports of abuse and exploitation, which have dogged its reputation and greatly undermined its many positive outcomes. While the scheme undoubtedly served a useful purpose when youth unemployment and emigration was rocketing at the height of the economic crash, it’s now time to move on,” he said.

IMPACT commissioned a study of JobBridge in 2015, which was carried out by Dr Mary Murphy of NUI Maynooth. The report acknowledged the contribution that JobBridge made to labour market activation in the years following the crisis, but raised concerns about the misuse of the programme, and identified the need for better monitoring and regulation of internships.

The report recommended that:

• Interns should be adequately compensated at the trainee rate of the minimum wage as a stepping stone to decent paid employment
• The number of active labour market internships should be proportionate to, and no more than, 5% of total active labour market interventions
• Internships should not be allowed in the public sector until there is full staffing and the recruitment moratorium is lifted
• The duration of state-funded internships should be regulated on a case by case basis through Intreo, LES or JobsPlus case workers, with longer internships offering possibility of progression
• Access to internship schemes be facilitated through regional internship strategy similar to that of Action Plan for Jobs and include working age claimants beyond the live register.

You can view a selection of photos from IMPACT’s 2016 biennial delegate conference here. Read more reports on conference business here. And read the conference documents here.