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We reckon that even our most avid readers are unlikely to want to peruse the fortnightly IMPACT members’ ebulletin on Saint Stephen’s day. So this is the final issue of the year.

We appreciated your interest in the bulletin in 2016, and we’d like to specially thank those of you who have given us comments and feedback this year. It’s much valued.

You might want to note that the union’s head office will close at 1pm on Friday 23^rd December and reopen on Wednesday 28^th. We’re also open on Thursday 29^th and Friday 30^th December, before closing for the New Year celebrations. We’re back to normal on Tuesday 3^rd January.

We hope that you and yours have a safe and happy Christmas, and a prosperous 2017. We’ll be back in January with more news and views from around IMPACT and the union world.

With very best wishes,

The IMPACT Communications Team.

IMPACT has recommended that local authority staff back industrial action in a ballot over a management decision to open all promotional posts to external competition from next month. Right now, 80% of vacancies must be filled by competitions confined to clerical and admin staff, library workers, and analogous grades.

The move follows a unilateral announcement last month that management intends to abandon the ‘common recruitment pool’ agreement without even discussing it with staff representatives. IMPACT’s Local Government division ordered the ballot at a special meeting called to respond to the edict.

IMPACT national secretary Peter Nolan said that, unless it was resisted, the change would reduce the chances of promotion for the majority of local authority staff. “This would severely restrict promotion opportunities for IMPACT members who have helped local authorities to weather the most difficult decade in their history,” he said.

The division is also running a separate ballot over a management decision to change library qualifications, again without any discussion with the union.

The ballots are being conducted by local branches, who have been asked to submit results to head office by 21^st December. Members should contact their local branch for details of voting arrangements.

IMPACT’s National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS) branch has called for the immediate recruitment of at least 94 psychologists. The union is also seeking a further Government commitment to recruit 17 more to meet increased serviced over the coming years.

The union organised a special briefing for Oireachtas members and education partners in Dublin last Wednesday (7^th December). The briefing was attended by a number of TDs and senators, including the Minister of State for Disability Issues Finian McGrath TD.

IMPACT official Tony Martin said that NEPS has provided a quality service to schools nationally since 1999, but had been subject to restructuring and restrictions on recruitment since 2008. “The education commitments outlined in the Programme for Government, including the commitment to increase the number of NEPS by 25%, have been welcomed by all who work in our education services. It is now vital that this commitment is implemented in order to ensure the service can meet the needs of a growing school population.

Educational psychologist Richard Egan said the union branch had produced a report in 2015, The Way Forward: A School Psychological Service for ALL Children and Young People, to outline the need for increased investment. “Ireland ranks 26^th in the world in terms of the pupil-to-psychologist ratio of its educational psychology service, while one in four Irish pupils have special educational needs, and up to one in five are experiencing emotional or behavioural disorders.

“Based on current demographics, a total of 250 psychologists is needed to achieve the internationally accepted psychologist-to-student ratio of 1:3,500.  Based on current projections, this figure would have risen to 267 psychologists by 2021. These figures do not include the additional 20 to 30 psychologists needed to provide a service in the early years and Youthreach settings,” he said.

Educational psychologist Sorcha O’Toole said the additional recruitment is vital in order to build capacity and ensure the service was in a position to respond to the needs of vulnerable children in need of support. “We are at an important crossroads now where the Government is planning the delivery of services in a post-crisis environment. Both the programme for government and the education statement of strategy and action plan commit to increase NEPS by 65 psychologists, to a total of 238 full-time equivalence,” she said.

Ms O’Toole added: “The commitments to expanding the NEPS service contained in the programme for government are a welcome and progressive measure. Our concern is that the process of implementation isn’t allowed to stall at this crucial stage. While this commitment was recently reiterated by the education minister in the Dáil, he stated that the current sanction remained capped at 173,” she said.

IMPACT deputy general secretary Kevin Callinan recently returned from an ICTU delegation to Colombia, the most dangerous country on earth for trade unionists. On his return he and ICTU president Brian Campfield had a letter, reflecting on the trip, published in the Belfast Telegraph.

In it they said they felt “privileged” to have been in the country during the “momentous week,” which saw the ratification of an historic peace deal between the government and the FARC group. But they drew attention to the massive “scale of the challenge that must be overcome” if the aspiration of the deal is to become a reality.

The authors offer some perspective on those challenges when they point out that Colombia is “a country of seven million displaced people, with 60,000 disappeared and 3,000 murdered trade unionists.”

Behind those statistics lies endless human suffering. They refer to the “countless testimonies” they heard of “assassination attempts, death threats, forced displacements and the persecution of community activists and trade unionists.”

One of the countless human stories the authors heard was that of the country’s best-known opposition figure: trade union leader Huber Ballesteros. They found him languishing in a jail cell despite not having been convicted of any crime. He did not have access to the basic medical equipment needed to manage his diabetes. Despite these horrendous conditions, they observed, his spirit remains undimmed.    

They end their letter with a call to action: “The international community has a particular obligation to step up its monitoring of human rights abuses and to urge action to be taken now against the attempts by Right-wing forces to thwart the agreement.”

Contacts between public service unions and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform are continuing after minister Paschal Donohoe agreed that pay anomalies arising from the recent garda Labour Court settlement had to be addressed before the end of next month. The Government had initially argued that there were no implications for the broader public service, but eventually bowed to IMPACT’s argument that the garda award went beyond the Lansdowne Road agreement.

Both IMPACT and the ICTU Public Services Committee (PSC) welcomed the Government’s decision to enter early talks, saying the discussions would provide a platform for improvements in the Lansdowne Road agreement (LRA). IMPACT general secretary Shay Cody is leading the union side in the negotiations as chair of the PSC.

The minister adopted a ‘two-phased approach,’ which decoupled the garda 'anomalies' issue from the broader question of post-Lansdowne Road pay restoration. This will see talks on a successor to Lansdowne Road beginning as soon as the Public Service Pay Commission (PSPC) reports in the second quarter of 2017.

The timing of the negotiations is also a significant win for IMPACT and other unions, who argued that the talks should be brought forward to the first half of next year, rather than taking place at an unspecified time in 2018. The significance of the revised timetable is that new provision for accelerated pay recovery can be included in next October’s budget if the talks are successful.

IMPACT continues to insist that the economy and exchequer finances are far stronger than anyone expected when Lansdowne Road was signed in the middle of last year. This is the basis of the union’s argument for accelerated pay restoration.

However, the post-LRA talks will be tough with minister Donohoe already indicating that a higher value should be placed on public service pensions because private sector retirement provision has declined in recent years. The ICTU PSC has made the opposite argument in its initial submission to the Public Service Pay Commission.

Public-private and international pay comparisons will also feature in the debate. This is also addressed in the PSC submission.

The ICTU Public Services Committee (PSC) has said that unwinding the FEMPI legislation, which introduced pay cuts and the public service pension levy, should be the main objective of negotiations on a successor to the Lansdowne Road Agreement. Following union pressure, the talks have now been brought forward to the middle of next year, and are expected to start once the Public Service Pay Commission (PSPC) makes its report in the second quarter of 2017.

IMPACT and other unions also say that other changes to working conditions, including some introduced under the Haddington Road agreement in 2013, need to be taken into account in the negotiations.

In its initial submission to the PSPC, ICTU unions say that, while international and public-private pay comparisons could inform public service pay policy in the longer term, the “timely negotiation of the pace and quantum of public service pay recovery” must be prioritised in the interests of fairness, and to “underpin industrial relations stability.”

The submission also says that the outcome of negotiations must bring benefits to all public servants. This requires a more sophisticated approach than the simple removal of FEMPI which, in the absence of other actions, “would be of little or no benefit to those public servants on the lowest incomes.”

The PSC argues that the 12% value placed on public service pensions when the Public Service Benchmarking Body last compared public and private pay rates in 2007 was “excessive.” It also calls on the PSPC to take account of disimprovements in public pensions in recent years.

Reductions in pension payments, the introduction of a ‘career average’ scheme for staff appointed since 2013, and an increased retirement age mean that “the value of public service pension arrangements has declined substantially in recent years,” it says.

The submission says any public-private pay comparisons are only valid if done on “a true like-for-like basis” of “the work of a grade in the public service and the work of an exact equivalent, or work of equal value, in the private sector.” In any case, it says the immediate priority should be to unwind the FEMPI legislation rather than embark on comprehensive pay analysis at this stage.

The unions also say that any international pay comparisons must be of similar jobs or like work, while taking account of the cost of living in various countries. They point out that no such study has so far been undertaken.

Read the initial ICTU Public Services Committee here.

Inadequate investment in early education has resulted in high childcare costs to parents and low wages for workers, according to IMPACT. In a submission to the Department of Children and Youth Affairs in relation to its ‘single affordable childcare scheme,’ the union says Irish parents pay some of the highest childcare costs in the world, while most people working in the sector don’t even earn a living wage.

The union is currently establishing an early education branch and recently joined forces with the Association of Childhood Professionals to campaign for professionalisation and better pay in the sector.

In its submission, IMPACT warned that the scheme maintains the existing market model of early education, which is built on poor wages and working conditions. The paper contains a number of recommendations including:

• Investment in early education and childcare should be increased to OECD average levels within five years, and should meet the UNICEF 1% target within ten years
• A national early years strategy should be developed as a matter of urgency
• There should be a cap on parental fees
• Salary scales should be agreed and based on qualifications, and payment of agreed rates should be a condition of public funding
• Paid parental leave should be introduced for either parent to allow children to be cared for at home between the age of six months and one year
• The scheme should be extended to childminders who meet quality requirements.

IMPACT also requested a meeting with the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs and members of the design team to discuss the development of the single affordable childcare scheme.

Read the IMPACT submission here.

IMPACT has urged local government minister Simon Coveney to meet worker representatives to discuss concerns over the expansion of ‘staffless’ libraries. The call came after the union’s 1,200 library workers backed industrial action by a margin of 9-1, with a voting turnout of 83%.

The union’s Local Government Divisional Executive Committee has instructed its members not to undertake the work necessary to facilitate the rollout of staffless services in 23 libraries across the country from Thursday (15^th December). IMPACT called its ballot in response to fears that the expansion of staffless libraries is the ‘thin end of a wedge,’ which will ultimately lead to job losses and sharply limited library services to the public.

IMPACT national secretary Peter Nolan said there were also fears about health and safety protections for library users and workers. “This is the thin end of a wedge that will lead to job losses and poorer library services. Local authorities already treat libraries as a Cinderella service and, if this goes ahead, nobody seriously believes they will resist the temptation to save more cash by replacing staffed libraries with the much more limited range of services available on a staffless basis,” he said.

IMPACT says the extension of staffless arrangements will leave library users unable to get assistance from trained and qualified staff, or benefit from cultural and educational events. IMPACT says this would hit less advantaged communities and individuals hardest, because wealthier and better educated groups generally need less help and can afford to pay for more cultural and educational experiences.

The union believes an unchecked drift to staffless libraries will, at best, fragment the service so that:

• Services in small towns and rural areas will become downgraded and predominantly unstaffed, with little or no access to specialist advice, educational courses or cultural events
• Poorer urban areas will be denied both extended opening hours and enhanced services based on modern information and communications technologies
• A relatively small number of ‘middle class’ urban areas may continue to enjoy relatively good services during core hours, with extended staffless opening times.

A previous pilot in three locations demonstrated that the vast majority of users continued to visit libraries during core, staffed hours.

Peter said: “These proposals will short-change communities. There’ll be no school visits, no storytelling, no help to find what you want, no security presence, and none of the hundreds of educational and artistic events that libraries provide throughout the year. Everyone will lose out, especially the elderly, students and people from disadvantaged communities and backgrounds. Meanwhile, management’s own data from the initial three pilots clearly demonstrates that the vast majority of us prefer to visit our local library during core hours when expert staff are there to help.”

Discussions on community health organisation (CHO) staffing structures below ‘heads of service’ level are expected in the New Year, after IMPACT agreed arrangements for heads of service and general managers in the nine CHO areas last month. The union has told management that there can be no changes to reporting relationships until these have been agreed through talks with the union.

Talks on staffing structures finally got underway after IMPACT insisted on a forum to deal with IMPACT grades. Prior to that, no discussions had taken place – even though the CHOs were being established – because other unions had refused to participate in an all-union forum.

The latest HSE reorganisation will see six new hospital groups and nine CHOs replace former HSE structures. IMPACT is also piloting new ‘panels,’ with representation from all branches in each of the HSE hospital and community health groups. This is to ensure that all branches and members are involved in decisions that affect them, even where the HSE organisations transcend IMPACT branch structures.

Read about IMPACT’s pilot panels here.