IMPACT members can get annual worldwide travel insurance for the whole family for just €59 a year. Find out about this and other fantastic benefits, including €5,000 free personal accident insurance, critical illness or death benefit. Spouses now covered for death benefit too. And you can save on car and home insurance.
You’re better off in IMPACT
IMPACT members are entitled to professional representation on pay and workplace issues. And you can save money through the wide range of financial benefits provided or negotiated by the union.
Childcare workers and providers have been backed into a corner by the Government’s ‘take it or leave it’ approach to new contracts for the provision of childcare under the early childhood care and education (ECCE) scheme, according to IMPACT organiser Una Faulkner.
Last week she told well-attended IMPACT information meetings - in Sligo, Athlone, Dublin and Cork - that providers had not been consulted on the contracts, which had been offered on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis. The IMPACT information meetings gave advice to childcare providers about the new contracts.
Una warned that the new terms, which were only issued by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs after IMPACT’s intervention, were significantly different to the 2015 arrangements.
“Providers have to accept the contracts to stay in business because otherwise parents will simply go elsewhere to get their entitlement to free childcare. But neither providers nor their staff have had any input,” she said.
The meetings, which are part of IMPACT’s drive to organise and uplift professionals in the early childhood sector, also addressed the challenge faced by thousands of professionals who are laid off for the summer months because the state only funds the ECCE scheme for ten months of the year.
“Service providers and staff in this sector face a huge challenge every year in their efforts to deliver a quality service. The duration of the contract means that staff are forced to find other work or claim social welfare during the summer months,” said Una.
This meant providers also saw their capacity compromised during the summer period. “This is simply unsustainable, and ignores the fact that parents and children need childcare during the summer months too,” she said.
IMPACT has been working jointly with the Association of Childcare Professionals to professionalise a sector where thousands of workers earn just above the minimum wage, despite being required to have a minimum QQI level six qualification.
IMPACT action has led to Irish Water insisting that the company it contracts to provide non-domestic billing services will recognise a trade union. The billing company, Abtran, has since confirmed that it will provide union facilities including a room to meet members and a check-off arrangements.
Last year Irish Water told IMPACT that it intended to take on non-domestic billing work that was previously done by local authorities. The union’s Local Government division correctly saw this as the first stage of outsourcing, and insisted that Irish Water should require any contractors to recognise a union. The company agreed.
At the same time, IMPACT moved to ensure that local authority staff involved in non-commercial billing would not be moved to the water utility.
IMPACT national secretary Peter Nolan said: “Workers in Abtran are able to get the protections of trade union membership as a result of the strong position taken by IMPACT’s Local Government division.”
Non-domestic consumers – mostly commercial organisations – have paid water charges for many years.
After the tragic events in Nice last week, IMPACT has made contact with French trade unions in order to express its deep condolences and sympathies. National secretary Peter Nolan was in correspondence with Stelios Tsiakkaros, of the CFDT group of unions.
Peter conveyed the condolences “of all of us here in IMPACT.” He offered the sympathies of IMPACT and its members to “CFDT, its members and those emergency service workers who were involved and continue to be involved in supporting the innocent victims."
Mr Tsiakkaros responded and thanked IMPACT for its thoughts and solidarity. In his response, he wrote that “these tragedies demonstrate that we need more solidarity and brotherhood among peoples not to fall into the trap of extremists."
He went on to say that “the global union movement can contribute and together we can defeat barbarism and protect our values and democracy."
IMPACT also expressed its condolences on social media. Here is the union’s reaction on Facebook:
And here is IMPACT’s response on Twitter:
The Force Ouvriere group of unions retweeted IMPACT’s response and thanked the union for its thoughts.
The cabinet has approved the establishment of a formal structure for dialogue between employers and trade unions. The new Labour Employer Economic Forum (LEEF), which will discuss economic and social policies that affect employment and the workplace, will be seen as a response to union and employer concerns about the lack of such a forum in the post-partnership era.
IMPACT general secretary Shay Cody said the forum would assist the development of public policy on workplace-related issues. “In recent years we’ve had no forum for government, employers and unions to tease out issues like collective bargaining legislation or the collapse of pay-setting mechanisms. It hasn’t stopped us addressing these issues, but it has certainly made it more difficult and time-consuming,” he said.
Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe said the new forum would help develop shared understandings on issues like competitiveness, job creation, labour market supports and pension coverage. He said the Workplace Relations Commission and Labour Court would continue to be the “key dispute settling industrial relations institutions within a voluntary system of industrial relations.”
Industrial action at the Oberstown youth detention centre has been suspended after management reached agreement with IMPACT over safety issues. The outcome will see the two sides agree a list of health and safety issues to be addressed, and sets a three-month timetable to deal with them.
Management has agreed not to proceed with any plans to change rosters or work locations while the process is underway. The Workplace Relations Commission, which brokered the deal, will again become involved if necessary. The two sides will review progress at the beginning of next month.
The Government has announced that a new Public Service Pay Commission (PSPC) will be established later this year, following a short consultation over its role and methodology. But, announcing the move last week, public spending minister Paschal Donohoe stressed that the body would not replace pay negotiations between government and unions.
The Government has announced that a new Public Service Pay Commission (PSPC) will be established later this year, following a short consultation over its role and methodology. But, announcing the move last week, public spending minister Paschal Donohoe stressed that the body would not replace pay negotiations between government and unions.
Donohoe said the Commission would “provide authoritative and evidence-based analysis of pay matters,” to inform negotiations. It will have the scope to compare the pay of specific groups of public service workers with those in similar private sector jobs.
The new body will also be able to make international comparisons of public service pay rates. However, such comparisons will have to “have due regard” to the cost of living in each jurisdiction, according to the minister. This is a significant safeguard because Ireland has one of the highest costs of living in the EU.
The Commission’s analysis will also take account of things like pension benefits, job security, and recruitment and retention issues. These have always been factors in public service pay determination.
Earlier this year, IMPACT deputy general secretary Kevin Callinan backed the idea of a commission, so long as it didn’t replace negotiated pay agreements or promote special deals for certain groups of public servants. “We are not leaving anyone behind on the journey to pay recovery,” he said.
Unions gave a guarded welcome to last week’s announcement, saying the Commission had the potential to assist in both the unwinding of the FEMPI legislation, which introduced pay cuts and pension levies during the crisis, as well as addressing other outstanding issues of concern to public servants.
In a statement, IMPACT and other public service unions said: “The credibility of the proposed Commission, in the eyes of public employees and others, will depend on it being chaired by a highly qualified and fully independent expert with a deep understanding of public service pay determination and related issues, including from an employee perspective.
“Similarly, its membership will have to be balanced and appropriately weighted. Among other things, this will require an adequate number of members with a trade union background and experience of public service remuneration and related matters.”
The ICTU Public Service Committee will now prepare a submission for the consultation on the body’s role and methodology.
The risk of industrial action in libraries in 13 local authority areas has reduced after local authority managers effectively dropped plans to amalgamate library services in 12 counties. IMPACT hailed the decision as “the best piece of library news for communities and workers in the affected counties since the economic crash.”
The risk of industrial action in libraries in 13 local authority areas has reduced after local authority managers effectively dropped plans to amalgamate library services in 12 counties. IMPACT hailed the decision as “the best piece of library news for communities and workers in the affected counties since the economic crash.”
IMPACT says it will await written confirmation of the decision, which includes a commitment to fill vacant county librarian posts, before officially deferring its industrial action. But the union’s national secretary Peter Nolan said “The risk of industrial action in our library services has now reduced.”
The Local Government Management Agency said that library amalgamations were no longer a matter of principle for them. The agency, which represents council management in discussions with unions, went on to say that the filling of vacant county librarian posts can now be considered.
It said there was scope for substantial cooperation between library authorities, and committed to writing to the union on the matter within two weeks.
The developments follow IMPACT’s lengthy campaign of opposition to library amalgamation plans, originally outlined in 2014, in the following local authorities: Carlow, Cavan, Cork City, Cork County, Kilkenny, Laois, Leitrim, Longford, Monaghan, Offaly, Roscommon, Sligo and Westmeath.
Peter said: “Our campaign won overwhelming support from the communities involved and their public representatives, for which we are grateful. This is the best piece of library news for communities and workers in the affected counties since the economic crash. It comes in the wake of a decision by library staff to take industrial action. While we will await the fine detail of the management proposals, the risk of industrial action in our library services has now reduced.”
IMPACT has opened a ballot of clerical, administrative and management staff in the HSE and voluntary hospitals over management’s failure to meet its commitment to re-open the HSE Job evaluation scheme from June.
IMPACT has opened a ballot of clerical, administrative and management staff in the HSE and voluntary hospitals over management’s failure to meet its commitment to re-open the HSE Job evaluation scheme from June.
The ballot is being conducted by local branches and closes on 12th August, when the precise form of industrial action will be decided. It’s likely to start with limited forms of action that maximise inconvenience for management, while minimising the impact on patients and other service users.
IMPACT national secretary Eamonn Donnelly said the failure to implement the job evaluation agreement put the HSE and health department in clear breach of the Lansdowne Road agreement (LRA).
“IMPACT raised job evaluation as a core issue in the Lansdowne Road talks and our health service members backed the deal on the clear understanding that it would deliver the reopening of the HSE scheme. I agree when I hear ministers says that Lansdowne Road is the only game in town. But I can’t find the section of the agreement that allows management to pick and choose the bits it wants to abide by.”
Union representatives are incredulous that management is stalling on a deal reached as recently as April, when the HSE said the scheme would re-open on 1st June. The talks that led to that agreement were established under Lansdowne Road after IMPACT identified job evaluation as a core issue for health staff.
When the HSE failed to follow through, IMPACT raised the issue at the LRA ‘health sector oversight body,’ which monitors implementation of the agreement in the sector. It subsequently became clear that the health service management intended to renege on the deal, despite the clear LRA commitment that the scheme would be re-opened.
The scheme, which is meant to apply to clerical and administrative grades III to VI, and related grades, offers staff the prospect of an upgrading if their job roles and responsibilities are found to have increased sufficiently.
Its eight-year suspension – it was abandoned at the onset of the economic crash – has led to a significant backlog of existing and potential applications from workers who have taken on substantial extra responsibilities as clerical and admin staff numbers fell dramatically during the crisis.
Job evaluation is an established tool that allows the knowledge, skill and responsibilities associated with individual jobs – rather than grades or staff categories – to be assessed and appropriately rewarded. While a job evaluation doesn’t guarantee an upgrading, many health staff believe their roles have grown considerably as they have taken on more work and responsibility over the years.
IMPACT says the scheme is capable of being applied to more senior administrative and management grades, as well as professional and technical staff, and has sought its extension to these grades.
Find out more about the scheme agreed – but not yet implemented – by the HSE HERE.
Too many images of working women portray them as bad mothers, while images of working men suggest that childcare’s not their concern. Lughan Deane’s been reading Sheryl Sandberg’s bestseller Lean In, and concludes that we have an image problem when it comes to working women.
In her bestselling manual on women in the workplace, Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg writes that “our culture needs to find a robust image of female success”.
Our dominant cultural image of the working mother today, she argues, is the ‘bad mother with a briefcase’ or (as blogger Jessica Valenti has called it, ‘the bad feminist mommy’ with a ‘sad white baby’).
A simple Google Image search for ‘working mother’ suggests that there is something in this:
The message delivered by images like these is that women ‘can’t have it all’. By venturing outside the home and into the workplace, the images say, a woman damages her family life. In the four images above, the phone (as a symbol of the world outside the home) removes the mother’s focus from her child. Both the mother and the child are depicted in distress.
When you search for images of a ‘stay at home mom’ instead, however, the collection of pictures that appears is strikingly different:
The ‘natural order’ is restored: the babies are no longer in distress, and the phone is no longer a symbol of a threatening outside world. The images scream ‘this is how it ought to be’.
Working Dad
Search for ‘working dad’, meanwhile, and you find yet more intriguing results. Most of the time, the working father is portrayed as getting ready to leave the house. Unlike in the cases of the women above, the men are not expected to juggle both children and a career - men’s interaction with their children is portrayed as brief and transitory. His focus is on the outside world:
Notice how the three daughters pictured help dress the father for his work outside the home, while the son learns to tie his own knot in anticipation of his future office job. Despite the father’s imminent departure, these children are happy: dad going to work is portrayed as a normal, natural thing (whereas mom working makes the babies cry).
Working Men
Our culture has a clear, well-defined trope or image of what a modern working man ought to look like. He is reliably portrayed with the paraphernalia of office work: the uniform suit, the newspaper, the phone and the coffee:
With his paper, coffee and phone, dad simply doesn’t have room to hold a baby. The situation in which the working man is burdened with a baby is portrayed as being unsustainable: something will fall, something has got to give.
These images depict the child as having been dumped on the man. The fathers portrayed look awkward and unsure as to how to handle the baby, they are seen to be shrugging in disbelief and wide-eyed in surprise: ‘how did this happen?’. They are in danger of dropping their standard-issue newspaper, phone or coffee due to the burden of holding this alien object.
Any doubt that our culture has an image problem when it comes to working women is quickly put to rest when you Google Image search terms like ‘young executive’:
Or ‘senior manager’:
Or, finally, CEO:
Every face is male and white.
Our society’s failure to come up with a ‘robust’ image of working women can be seen beyond Google’s algorithms.
Hollywood is where we see our culture reflected back to us in its most distilled form. Recent Hollywood productions do not score much better than search engine algorithms in providing a robust cultural image of working mothers.
Take I Don’t Know How She Does it as an example. Kate Reddy (Sarah Jessica Parker) tries to ‘have it all’ - the idyllic home life, the high powered career and the vibrant social life. Her husband, Richard (Greg Kinnear), is an out of work architect. She’s the breadwinner, he’s the stay at home dad - traditional gender roles are inverted.
Unsurprisingly, given Hollywood’s hardline social conservatism, this spells disaster. Kate comes across as a frazzled tourist in an outlandishly male world. Her life is a hectic nightmare. She soon concludes that the conservatives were right - in order to be happy it’s the woman who must stay at home:
MPACT has warned that revelations of irregular pay arrangements for top managers in charities and voluntary organisations will put funding, jobs and vital services at risk unless the Government acts. The union said hard-working and modestly-paid staff in St John of Gods and other charities were concerned that long-term reputational damage was being done to their sector, which plays a unique and irreplaceable role in public service delivery.
IMPACT has warned that revelations of irregular pay arrangements for top managers in charities and voluntary organisations will put funding, jobs and vital services at risk unless the Government acts. The union said hard-working and modestly-paid staff in St John of Gods and other charities were concerned that long-term reputational damage was being done to their sector, which plays a unique and irreplaceable role in public service delivery.
IMPACT official Ian McDonnell said staff in the sector had worked tirelessly to maintain services as budgets, wages and staffing were repeatedly cut throughout the recession.
“Staff are appalled at the revelations about senior managers in certain organisations, including Saint John of Gods where top managers appear to have benefited from huge pension injections and a shady two-tiered payroll system.”
He called on the Government to send a clear message that most charity and voluntary sector staff – including most managers – are honest people, committed to the services they provide. “The relevant Government departments must act quickly to stamp out unjustified and irregular payments to senior managers. They also need to give public assurances that State support for the sector will continue so that essential services continue to be funded and delivered,” he said.
Ian said reports that senior figures at St John of God's received top up payments were particularly galling for IMPACT members who experienced a consistent management policy of reducing full-time staff hours over recent years. “This has stretched staff and services to breaking point at a time when funds were apparently available for senior management top ups.”
