16th July 2013

IMPACT and other unions are to campaign for the repeal of the Fiscal Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (FEMPI) Act, which imposes pay cuts and other measures on members of public service unions that reject the Haddington Road agreement. This follows a unanimous decision taken at the Irish Congress of Trade Unions’ biennial delegate conference in Belfast earlier this month.

The conference heard that the legislation – and earlier threats that, in the absence of a deal, the Government would impose pay cuts and other changes to working conditions – had left public servants with no choice but to accept the Haddington Road agreement.

Unions also expressed concern that, if the legislation remains on the statute book, future governments could again be tempted to change public service pay and conditions without negotiation.

IMPACT general secretary Shay Cody said there was righteous indignation that successive governments had now imposed three pay cuts in the public service. The most recent of these, which comes into force this month, affects the highest-earning 13% of public servants. The others were imposed on all public servants across the board in 2009 and 2010.

Mr Cody said the FEMPI legislation must be repealed to stop future governments coming back for more. He also called on public service unions to show solidarity with private sector workers facing the threat of pay cuts following the recent Supreme Court decision that pay protections for workers in low-paid sectors of the economy were unconstitutional.

“While we have gone through terrible times in the public services, have we assimilated the absolute catastrophe that is falling on our colleagues because of the decisions in relation to the JLC and REA wage-setting mechanisms,” he asked delegates.

It now falls to the incoming ICTU executive to action the decision.