IMPACT members have voted three to one in favour of the Lansdowne Road Agreement. The ballot result, which was announced yesterday (6th July), saw 75% of IMPACT members vote in favour of the agreement, which extends the main provisions of the Haddington Road Agreement until September 2018, and restores around €2,000 to the pay of most public servants in three phases between January 2016 and September 2017.

The agreement is subject to ratification by an aggregate ballot of the Public Services Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. This is expected to take place in the early autumn, once all of the public service unions complete their ballots.

IMPACT general secretary Shay Cody said that a series of information meetings, held in workplaces throughout the country during the three-week ballot, had encouraged IMPACT members to fully interrogate the provisions of the agreement.

Shay said “The Lansdowne Road Agreement marks the first positive movement on public sector pay in more than eight years, and the commencement of the process to unwind the emergency legislation that was used to cut pay during the economic crisis. It was important for IMPACT members to be fully informed about the agreement before casting their vote.”

He said this had encouraged a quality debate within the membership of IMPACT and that this was reflected in the ballot result.

Shay said that the increase to public sector worker incomes, from 1^st January 2016, would boost domestic demand and support continuing economic growth. “Pay improvements in the public and private sectors will be spent in the domestic economy, in small and medium enterprises all over the country. That spending will help those businesses to grow, to create jobs and help to improve living standards.

“IMPACT has consistently argued that the whole country needs a pay rise after such a long period of wage stagnation. With pay improvements already taking place in the private sector, more noticeably since 2014, it makes sense for public sector pay to keep in step” he said. 

IMPACT has welcomed the announcement today (Tuesday 7th July) by the Department of Education and Skills that 610 additional SNA posts are to be allocated in the new school year commencing in September. 

The increase is in addition to the 365 extra posts announced by the Government in last October’s budget, and brings the number of whole time SNA posts to 11,820 from September 2015.

IMPACT's deputy general secretary, Kevin Callinan, said the increase in the number of posts was welcome news both for SNAs and for the families of children with special education needs.

“This is exceptionally good news on a number of fronts. It provides a major boost for children with special education needs. It expands the existing service and will help to meet growing demand. This will be welcome news for parents of those children too, as it will mean that there are more education resources available to them,” he said.

Kevin added, “The special needs assistant service has transformed the education landscape by providing a quality experience of mainstream education for children with special education needs.”

Kevin said that the number of children going to school had grown by 50,000 since 2009, which means a growing number of children are in need of the SNA service. “The economic crisis meant that the service was cut significantly in 2010, and there has been an inevitable uncertainty each year as news of the following year’s allocation was announced. So the creation of almost a thousand new posts since last October is very significant and very welcome,” he said.

New agreement

Kevin said the announcement of the new posts was timely, as IMPACT had recently finalised an agreement with the Department of Education and Skills on a revised circular to deal with a dispute over the fragmentation of special needs assistants (SNA) posts.

The Minister for Education and Skills Jan O’ Sullivan TD, issued an invitation to unions and management to discuss the issue when she addressed IMPACT’s Education division conference in April.

The new agreement means that schools that receive an additional allocation of SNA hours (or posts) must first offer the additional work to existing part-time SNAs in their employment - in order of their seniority - before the employer has recourse to the arrangements for assigning SNAs.

In a recent letter to SNAs, IMPACT assistant general secretary Dessie Robinson explained “In essence, this means that before an employer opts to recruit more SNAs, they must ensure that all existing part-time SNAs in their employment, in order of seniority, have been offered a full-time position in the school.”

A ballot by IMPACT cabin crew members, on a set of rostering proposals put forward by Aer Lingus, was passed by an overwhelming majority at the end of June. A total of 89% voted in favour of accepting the proposals put forward by Aer Lingus.

These proposals sought to address outstanding cabin crew issues, including the implementation of a ‘5/3’ (five days on / three days off) roster. This was the subject of a dispute with the company last year, and resulted in a one day strike action by cabin crew on the 2014 June bank holiday weekend.

Under the proposals, a number of changes are also to take effect on ratification of the agreement, including:

• Three days off rather than two after every second period of transatlantic duties
• A third day off after all Shannon-Dublin-Toronto duties; an extra four days off for Cork-based crew
• Improvements to some working rules and the introduction of a winter leave peremptory request for all crew.

IMPACT national secretary Matt Staunton informed Aer Lingus of the result and confirmed that the agreement is to commence with immediate effect.

Assistant general secretary Michael Landers commented, “We are happy with the outcome of the negotiations. It’s not everything we wanted but it’s a huge improvement on where we were.  It has the potential to generate an even better outcome once the financial analysis is completed.  It marks the first time in almost a decade that cabin crew have seen an improvement in their terms and conditions.”

In its latest Quarterly Economic Observer, the Nevin Economic Research Institute (NERI) has said it anticipates that the economy will grow at a “reasonably robust rate” during the 2015 to 2017 period, although it says that growth will moderate year-on-year.

The NERI report says that the economy remains below its potential output level, and, driven by strong but declining employment growth, is projected to grow faster than the economy’s long-run average potential growth rate out to 2017.

Unemployment

The report says that the unemployment rate will continue to fall and projects that, by mid-2016, the number of persons unemployed will have fallen below 200,000. It says that more than two million people will be in employment by the end of next year.

Other findings in the NERI report include:

• Strong GDP growth of 3.7% in 2015, declining marginally to 3.5% in 2016
• Consumption will continue its recovery driven by rising real disposable incomes
• The strengthening economy will boost the public finances with the deficit falling to around 2.4% in 2015 and 1.8% in 2016
• Unemployment will steadily decrease out to 2016, with the 2015 figure averaging 9.7% and the 2016 figure averaging 8.9%
• Employment growth will be close to 2.2% in 2015 and 1.9% in 2016.

Budget 2016

The NERI says it rejects the Government’s proposed 50-50 split between revenue and expenditure measures in the October Budget as “inappropriate” because of “the far from optimal growth and equity implications of that split and the currently low levels of government revenue and spending,” and added that there is no scope for reducing the tax take in Budget 2016 “given the pressures on the expenditure side.”

Instead, the Institute argues that long-run economic growth, employment and equity goals can best be achieved by prioritising use of the available fiscal space to increase public capital investment levels. It also argues for a modest increase in social spending funded by a set of growth-friendly reforms to increase total government revenue.

Northern Ireland

The NERI report says that the outlook for Northern Ireland economy has weakened following the outcome of the recent general election in the UK “and the negative implications for public spending and aggregate demand.” It adds that continuing uncertainty, due to the planned referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union, also has the potential to undermine the attractiveness of Northern Ireland as a location for foreign direct investment.

The full report is available to download HERE.

The 2014 annual report of the Health & Safety Authority (HAS) shows another annual increase in the number of workplace fatalities and the incidents of non-fatal injuries.

There were 56 fatal workplace accidents reported in 2014, an increase of 16% on the 2013 figure. A total of 7,431 non-fatal injuries were reported in 2014, an increase of 11% on the previous year’s figure.

Health and social work reported the highest number of non-fatal injuries, while agriculture and construction continue to be the most hazardous sectors.

Minister for Business and Employment, Ged Nash TD, expressed concern at the increases outlined in the report. He said “it is our goal to increase employment opportunities, but it concerns me that as the number of people at work increases the rate of non-fatal accidents has also risen.  We must ensure that economic recovery is not at the expense of safety and health standards”.

IMPACT assistant general secretary Geraldine O’Brien works with IMPACT HSA branch, which represents staff at the Authority. Geraldine said, “In recent years IMPACT has continued to highlight the elevated risk of death and serious injury in the workplace as the number of workplace inspections continued to fall due to resource constraints at the HSA. The rate of workplace inspections decreased by another 12% in 2014.

“With more people returning to work each year, and fewer workplace inspections, the risks continue to increase. It is essential that the workplace inspection regime is fully resourced so that it can meet the demands of a growing workforce," she said.

The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (DPER) has published the public service sick leave statistics for 2014. The latest figures report a significant reduction in absenteeism rates and reductions to the cost of sick leave compared to the previous year.

The figures relate to 245,000 full-time equivalent posts across  public services and includes the Civil Service, local authorities, and the education, health, justice and defence sectors.

The department’s statistics report shows an average of 8.7 days, per full-time equivalent post, were taken as sick leave in 2014, which is down from 9.5 days in 2013. The rate of sick leave across the service is now 4.0%, a reduction of 0.3% on the 2013 figure, and the report says that this represents an additional 260,000 days worked by public servants in 2014 compared to the previous year.

The report says that the overall cost of sick leave to the state is estimated at €319 million for 2014 and that this represents a saving of almost 14% (€51.5 million) since 2013.

New sick leave arrangements for public service workers came into force in March 2014, so the cost reductions for a full year are likely to be greater.

The changes to sick leave, introduced last year, mean that a distinction is made between ‘critical’ and ‘non-critical’ illnesses when implementing paid sick leave arrangements. The amount of paid leave for non-critical illnesses was halved to three months on full pay, followed by three months on half pay. However, IMPACT and other unions successfully argued that staff with critical illnesses should keep the existing arrangement of six months on full pay, followed by six months on half pay.

The critical illness protocol sets out procedures for defining a ‘critical’ illness, and clarifies how an individual’s eligibility for full and half-paid leave is determined.