ANALYSIS:Thus far there are no surprises in the results of union ballots on the Croke Park deal, writes MARTIN WALL
THE RESULTS of the ballots of the three main teacher unions on the Croke Park deal on public service pay and reform were not unexpected.
The executives of the TUI and the ASTI had recommended rejection of the accord, while the executive of the INTO had urged members to vote in favour.
If members in other unions, particularly in the large unions like Siptu and Impact, also vote along the lines recommended by their executive committees, the deal is likely to be accepted by possibly a two-to-one margin when it goes for ratification by the public services committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.
However implementation of the agreement may not be quite that simple. Questions remain as to whether some unions which have voted against the deal will agree to be bound by the outcome of a majority vote.
The ratification of the deal by the public service trade union movement effectively involves a two-stage process. Firstly individual unions carry out ballots of their members – a process that is now under way.
When the public service committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Union meets in mid-June,it will make a final decision on whether to accept or reject the Croke Park deal based on a majority vote of constituent unions. Each union will be given a “weight” to take account of the size of the membership.
Therefore the position of Siptu, with more than 70,000 public service members, and Impact, which has about 65,000 members, will be crucial.
Last night the outgoing general secretary of Impact and chairman of the public services committee, Peter McLoone, said he believed that the majority of his union’s members would vote in favour of the agreement.
On Thursday delegates at the Impact conference in Kilkenny decisively rejected, on a show of hands, calls for the union to reject the agreement.
Yesterday teachers who are members of the TUI voted against the Croke Park deal by a three-to-one margin while last week members of the Civil Public and Services Union, which represents lower-paid civil servants, rejected the agreement by 67 per cent to 33 per cent.
However under the rules of the public services committee the decisions of unions such as these in their ballots could be subsumed by the votes of the larger unions who are in favour of the deal.
In a statement yesterday the general secretary of the TUI Peter MacMenamin said that the union had in the past indicated that it would not feel itself bound by any majority decision taken by the public services committee, particularly in relation to issues concerning conditions of service.
“This position is reiterated today”, he said.
MacMenamin has also previously argued that the concept of a majority vote on the public services committee went against a rule change agreed at a conference of Ictu some years ago.
If unions refuse to be bound by the majority decision of the committee, it begs the question as to what would happen then.
Would unions, for example, be prepared to go it alone in opposing Government’s reforms?
McLoone said last night that unions maintaining that they would not be bound would have to make a decision after the individual ballots were completed in mid-June.
Presumably such decisions would be influenced by the number of public service unions which reject the Croke Park deal.
However not all unions which are recommending rejection are against the concept of a majority vote on the public services committee.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation has more than 40,000 members and is the largest union urging a No vote. However it has said that it will agree to abide by the majority on the public services committee.
The INMO also does not believe that a rejection of the deal would involve further industrial action.
The results of the teaching union ballots yesterday show that public servants are strongly divided on the Croke Park deal. However, at this stage a majority would seem to be prepared to accept the agreement.
Whether this is sufficient to allow for the trouble-free implementation of the deal remains to be seen.
