IMPACT has written to all councillors at Dublin City Council, rejecting chief executive Owen Keegan’s claim that street cleaning and road and housing maintenance jobs in the authority are at risk of privatisation.

Mr Keegan’s claim follows a decision by the Council to oppose his plans for a consolidated or ‘super depot’ at Marrowbone Lane. IMPACT’s Municipal division represents street cleaning and road and housing maintenance staff at Dublin City Council.

IMPACT industrial relations officer Shane Lambert wrote to councillors last week to say the union does not accept there is any need to privatise services, and that no proposals on the consolidation of council depots have been put to the union.

Shane said: "As the union representing street cleaning and road and housing maintenance staff at DCC, IMPACT does not accept there is any need to privatise any services, regardless of what happens to the Marrowbone Lane site in the future.

"We believe there are plenty of alternative sites that could be developed. Management has not presented any proposals, nor arranged discussions with us, on the possible consolidation of DCC depot facilities.

"In the discussion about the future plans for the area, I note that councillors have expressed understandable concerns over the lack of green spaces and amenities in the Dublin 8 area. The union acknowledges the importance of recognising the needs of the local community in any decisions about how services are developed,” he said.

Shane added that the union has always operated on the basis that it is best to consult matters openly, giving consideration to the views of all stakeholders. “However, rather than engage in discussions with us, we have instead been threatened by the chief executive with privatisation as an inevitable result of the decision on Marrowbone Lane.

"No case for privatisation has been put to union. We don't believe there is a valid case to be made. IMPACT will strongly resist any attempt to outsource or privatise council services, and it’s completely unacceptable to threaten privatisation as a response to the decision by democratically elected city councillors."

Shane welcomed the support expressed by a number of councillors this week in response to the privatisation threat.

You can read Shane’s letter to Dublin City councillors here.

At the end of last month he told the Dáil that he did “not envisage further contact with any groups in regard to future changes in public service pay or pensions because the agreement we have is in place up to 2018.”

The minister has also told TDs he expects to be consulting unions on the establishment of a new public service pay determination process “in the coming weeks.” This was a reference to the Programme for Government commitment to establish a public service pay commission.

Unions are not surprised at the minister’s apparently hard public stance at this stage of the year-old Lansdowne Road Deal. The linked issues of accelerated pay recovery and future public service pay determination were flagged at an introductory meeting between Donohoe and public service union leaders – led by IMPACT’s Shay Cody – in early May.

Also in May, IMPACT’s outgoing president Jerry King said the union expected talks on a new public service pay deal to start within a year – that is in the first half of 2017. Calls for accelerated pay recovery were voiced by virtually every public service union at recent delegate conferences, and the issue is likely to be discussed at a meeting of ICTU’s Public Services Committee this week.

The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform says the public service pay bill will rise by €844 million a year over the lifetime of the Lansdowne Road agreement. There will also be a €90 million annual increase in public service pension payments.

IMPACT has demanded an acceleration of recruitment in the education sector, and has sought Government support for a range of measures to tackle educational disadvantage. The union, which represents over 10,000 staff in the education sector, put forward the proposals last week in its submission to education minister Richard Bruton’s consultation on an education strategy for the 2016-2018 period.

Separately, IMPACT has joined a coalition of the biggest unions in higher education (the Union of Students in Ireland, the Irish Federation of University Teachers, SIPTU and the Teachers Union of Ireland) to publish a joint proposal on higher education funding as part of the same consultation process.

IMPACT’s submission to the education strategy demands an acceleration of recruitment in the education sector, and has sought Government support for a range of measures to tackle educational disadvantage.

You can read more about IMPACT’s submission here and the full document is available here.

More information on the joint submission on higher education funding is available here and you can download the full submission here.

Library staff in 13 local authorities are balloting for industrial action in a dispute over plans to amalgamate library services on a two or three-county basis. IMPACT says the proposals would threaten service provision as library budgets come under increasing pressure. The decision to ballot followed a meeting of branch and library representatives last month.

The ballots, which are being conducted by local IMPACT branches, close at noon on Friday 1^st July, with a national result due to be declared the following Monday. The local authorities affected are Carlow, Cavan, Cork City, Cork County, Kilkenny, Laois, Leitrim, Longford, Monaghan, Offaly, Roscommon, Sligo and Westmeath.

IMPACT says the proposals, drawn up by a Dublin-based planning group, took little account of local needs and failed to include a cost-benefit analysis. The union says neither staff nor local elected representatives have been properly consulted on the initiative, which has no statutory basis and could herald the end of local decision-making on library services.

There are also concerns over the impact of the proposals on staffing and career structures, and the possible relocation of staff across county boundaries.

A union spokesperson said: “Local libraries are vital social hubs in rural and urban communities that have already lost shops, garda stations, post offices and other local amenities. We can’t allow our thriving library system to be gutted on foot of a remote number-crunching exercise, which doesn’t reflect local needs or the realities of community life.

“The proposed mergers would immediately create gaps in expertise at the highest level in certain counties, and would ultimately lead to reduced library services to the public. There are already many vacant posts in libraries in most counties, which is affecting services and staff morale.”

Under the proposed programme, the employee could face disciplinary warnings and eventual dismissal (after eight months) if their performance failed to reach an acceptable level.

Civil service unions worked together to refer the matter to arbitration. The arbitration board said that the proposed new underperformance policy was in accordance with good management practice. However, the board found that the underperformance programme should not be implemented until the outcome of the new PMDS rating system is known. The new rating system is in its first year of operation, the results of which are due in January 2017.

IMPACT National Secretary Andy Pike said the matter will be reviewed when those results are known. “If significant numbers of staff are assessed as ‘unsatisfactory’, the implementation of the underperformance policy will need to be reviewed again.

“This is a good outcome for staff and also for the service. It makes sense to pause implementation so that all parties can assess how many staff might be subject to these provisions.

“The unions had already secured new rights of appeal against any disciplinary warnings, and now we have secured a pause to implementation to ensure we have robust yet fair procedures for addressing underperformance,” he said.

A demand for justice for Clerys workers was projected onto the façade of the iconic O’Connell Street building to mark the first anniversary of the department store’s closure at the weekend. Former Clerys’ workers assembled at the site to mark their year-long campaign, which recently saw Dáil Éireann pass a motion calling on the Government to legislate to strengthen worker protections in similar situations.

SIPTU official Ethel Buckley, who led the Clerys workers’ campaign, said the anniversary should remind politicians of their promises. The law currently allows unscrupulous owners to exploit legal loopholes to create bogus insolvency and redundancy situations, and avoid their responsibilities to staff and creditors.

Ms Buckley said: “Politicians from all parties in Dáil Éireann rightly condemned the treatment of Clerys workers this time last year. These same politicians must now legislate without delay to ensure such a scenario can never happen again. This would bring new security to Ireland’s working people and be a fitting legacy to the brave Clerys workers.”

The Dáil motion, passed on 1^st June 2016, called for the implementation of the recommendations of the ‘Duffy-Cahill’ review of laws on employee protection when assets are separated from operating companies. It was proposed by the Labour Party and supported by Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin, and a number of smaller parties and non-government independents.

The Duffy-Cahill report recommended changes to the law to ensure a minimum 30-day consultation period before employers can implement collective redundancies. It also called for a mechanism to recover assets transferred out of a business in certain circumstances.

Residential care workers and supervising staff at the Oberstown youth detention centre are balloting on a set of proposals tabled at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) aimed at resolving a dispute over poor safety measures and increasing assaults on the campus.

Planned industrial action, a series of four-hour stoppages planned for each Tuesday in June, has been suspended.

Ballot papers are circulating to IMPACT members at Oberstown today (Monday 13^th June) and the ballot closes at 1pm this Friday (17^th June).

The dispute emerged against the background of a high and growing number of attacks on staff since the expansion of the State’s only youth detention centre to facilitate the transfer of offenders from the prison service. SIPTU and IMPACT say staff and residents are exposed to daily risk of violent assault.

The Oberstown campus currently caters for 48 under-18s, including a mix of vulnerable young offenders and violent criminals with multiple convictions for serious offences. The most recent official figures revealed over 100 violent incidents in Oberstown last year, almost half of which were classed as ‘critical’. Critical assaults and injuries necessitated a total of 3,005 employee sick days, involving 65 staff members.

IMPACT’s seminar on homelessness and the housing crisis, which took place in the union’s Limerick offices at the beginning of June, served as a reminder that the problem is a national one.

The seminar was very well attended, showing a high level of interest among stakeholder groups and the wider public.

The seminar was addressed by a wide range of speakers, including Erica Fleming, who featured in the recent RTÉ documentary My Homeless Family. Erica is actively campaigning for government action on homelessness, and joined the IMPACT seminar in Limerick with her nine-year-old daughter Emily.

The seminar was also addressed by IMPACT deputy general secretary Kevin Callinan, who called for an easing of EU fiscal rules to enable a comprehensive State programme of building and buying affordable housing. He said this is achievable if we work together to put pressure on the political system.

Dublin City planner and IMPACT activist Kieran Rose focused on the need for an effective vacant land levy in order to stop land hoarding and said reducing apartment housing quality is not a way to increase housing supply or affordability.

Rory O’Donnell, director of the National Economic and Social Council (NESC), discussed the policy solutions set out in four recent NESC reports, including an effective system of rent regulation.

Focus Ireland’s Mike Allen, and Simon Community’s Jackie Bonfield, spoke on the complex nature of homelessness and solutions they believe can improve the current crisis.

Read more about the seminar in IMPACT organiser Joe O’Connor’s blog: Now let’s act on homelessness(3^rd June 2016).

A new IMPACT blog takes a tour round the treacherous waters of the proposed transatlantic trade deal, and outlines why unions here and abroad are campaigning against its adoption by the EU.

Based on a response to a parliamentary question raised in the Dáil last year, there are currently 380 individuals in receipt of sessional rates of pay in the health sector. These include grades such as psychologists, social workers, physiotherapists and pharmacists, most of which are IMPACT grades.

This prompted Micheal McGoldrick, a sessional pharmacist with the HSE addiction services, and a member of the IMPACT’s Dublin North Health and Welfare branch, to get in touch with as many other sessional staff/employees in the health sector as possible. “My aim is to set up an informal group within IMPACT to advocate on behalf of sessional workers generally, and to help others obtain the benefits above we have obtained over the years.” he said.

Micheal added that sessional pharmacists working in addiction services have had success in obtaining a range of benefits including sick pay and paid maternity leave.

“I’m asking members who are paid a sessional rate of pay to get in touch with me, or with an IMPACT official, to explore the potential of forming such a group. The issues facing sessional staff, regarding employee status and the benefits which flow from this, are likely to be similar throughout the health sector,” he said.

If you are a sessional employee and would like to get in touch, Micheal can be contacted by email. Alternatively, please make contact with your local official.