Up to 700 delegates from workplaces across the country are expected to attend the event, which will set the union’s policies and priorities for the next two years.

On Thursday 19^th May, delegates will debate 27 motions on pay, including proposals from the union’s elected executive on pay restoration, future public service pay determination, and the extension of the ‘living wage.’ The Lansdowne Road agreement has begun the process of public service pay recovery, but IMPACT has said it will want this accelerated if better-than-expected growth and ‘fiscal space’ emerge in the coming months.

The conference will also decide whether to continue discussions on the creation of a new union involving IMPACT, the Civil Public and Service Union (CPSU) and the Public Service Executive Union (PSEU). A motion from the union’s executive backs continued negotiations, leading to ballots of members of the three unions in 2017. Identical proposals were recently backed by large majorities at the PSEU and CPSU conferences.

Delegates will also debate motions on pensions, staffing, leave, housing and other public services, employment rights and union development.

Unions have challenged Dáil members to legislate to protect workers from exploitative owners after the Government published its report on last year’s Clerys scandal. Long-standing Clerys staff were thrown out of work, with minimal taxpayer-funded compensation, when the owners stripped the company’s assets and declared the store bankrupt.

Published earlier this week, the report by Labour Court chairman Kevin Duffy and barrister Nessa Cahill recommends changes to the law to ensure a minimum 30-day consultation period before employers can implement collective redundancies. It also recommends the introduction of a mechanism for recovering assets transferred out of a business in certain circumstances.

SIPTU official Ethel Buckley, who led the Clerys workers’ campaign, said: “Politicians from all parties condemned the treatment of the Clerys workers by Gordon Brothers and Natrium at the time of the store’s closure. These same politicians must now legislate without delay to ensure such a scenario can never happen again.”

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions said the report’s recommendations would protect workers if they were implemented in full. Its general secretary Patricia King said: “A key priority for the very brave staff of Clerys was to ensure that what happened to them could never happen to any other group of workers. We believe these recommendations will prove very helpful in protecting workers from ever having to experience the detestable treatment meted out by Natrium to Clerys staff.”

Ms Buckley paid tribute to the Clerys workers. “Their determination to highlight the injustice done to them, and to ensure it cannot be repeated, will be a fitting legacy when the changes proposed in this report become effective,” she said.

Read the report HERE.

An IMPACT member from the mid-west has been awarded €50,000 by the Workplace Relations Commission after it ruled that she was unlawfully dismissed for being pregnant. The union understands that her local authority employer intends to appeal the award, which was made under the employment equality legislation.

The worker was employed as a temporary administrative officer on a five-year fixed-term contract, during which she experienced pregnancy-related illnesses linked to miscarriages. At the end of her contract period, a manager told her she would not be kept on because of economic circumstances, but added that “the fact you are pregnant does not help.” He later ‘clarified’ his remarks.

A male employee who did similar work had his contract renewed.

The equality officer who heard the case said that “the entire period of pregnancy and maternity leave constituted a special, protected period under EU law.”

A meeting of representatives of staff in libraries earmarked for amalgamation by the Local Government Management Agency has been organised by IMPACT’s Local Government division. The event, which takes place in May, will shape the union’s response to threats to staff conditions.

In a letter to the IMPACT branches concerned, IMPACT national secretary Peter Nolan said: “It is clear at this stage that the employment conditions and career opportunities of members in these authorities are being eroded.”

The amalgamation plans would affect libraries in Carlow, Cavan, Cork, Kilkenny, Laois, Leitrim, Longford, Monaghan, Offaly, Roscommon, Sligo and Westmeath.

IMPACT has criticised the US Department of Transport’s decision to grant a permit to Norwegian Air International (NAI) to facilitate a Cork-Boston service, saying it won’t create any jobs in Ireland, the EU or the USA.

The international carrier is using a subsidiary in Ireland in order to bypass Norwegian employment law. The permit allows the subsidiary to hire flight crew using an agency in Singapore. This will allow NAI to fly between the EU and US using flight crews hired on contracts signed in Singapore.

US labour unions have voiced strong opposition to the granting of the permit, and have been supported by IALPA, the pilots’ branch of IMPACT.

IALPA president Evan Cullen said: “NAI’s parent company, Norwegian Air Shuttle (NAS), could already be flying from Cork to the US under permits it already holds. It sought a separate US permit for its NAI subsidiary, a company that continues to employ flight crews under individual Asian contracts. A transatlantic coalition of airlines and unions has argued that NAI’s application should not be approved because its conduct diminishes the high labour standards embodied in the existing US-EU air service agreement.”

IMPACT national secretary Angela Kirk said the permit could erode Irish employment conditions in the longer term. “If NAI can operate between two regions, while at the same time bypass employment laws in both of them, it is likely to undermine existing employment conditions in the EU and US. If these employment standards are undermined through convenient offshore arrangements, the long term future of aviation employment standards is very bleak,” she said.

Eighty IMPACT members will receive grants of €150 towards their children’s residential Irish language courses in the Gaeltacht this summer. Their names were randomly drawn from 415 applications to the annual scheme.

It is expected that the 2017 scheme will open in late January/early February 2017.

Click HERE to see the full list of successful applicants.

The senior laboratory analyst also participated in a number of other committees and groups within IMPACT and its predecessor, the Union of Professional and Technical Civil Servants (UPTCS). He chaired the union’s civil service laboratories vocational group until his retirement.

Tony was presented with a distinguished service award by IMPACT general secretary Shay Cody at the Agri-labs branch AGM last month. “This award acknowledges Tony’s dedicated commitment as a union activist throughout his career, protecting and enhancing the rights and working conditions of branch members,” according to branch colleague Benny Conaty.

Tony now intends to be an active member of IMPACT’s retired members’ vocational group.