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.
