Lower-paid civil servants have demanded that they should receive priority from the Government in any restoration of pay rates in the public service.
Addressing the annual conference of the Civil Public and Services Union (CPSU) in Galway, its general secretary Eoin Ronayne said it was about time the Government began preparing to restore pay rates after years of austerity in which his members experienced dramatic cuts in earnings but provided significant increases in productivity.
He said the Haddington Road agreement made two commitments in the area of pay restoration.
He said it reaffirmed a previous commitment in the original Croke Park deal that in any review of pay those earning up to €35,000 would be prioritised.
However, the agreement also had a provision to restore pay cuts imposed last year on those earning more than €65,000 in two phases, in 2017 and 2018.
“For the record and in fairness and equity on behalf of workers let me state very clearly …there is an absolute case for earnings below €35,000 to be prioritised for pay restoration over and above any or all other commitments in Haddington Road.
All public sector workers stand to gain from this position. When we have redressed the reductions in income since 2009 for earnings of the first €35,000 then and only then should we progress to restore income levels above that point.
To do otherwise would be to place a higher right and premium on the interests of those better off than those on low incomes. If there is any justice in the Ireland of today it must be the recognition that Government must ease the pressure on those at the bottom first.”
Mr Ronayne said in Germany the Government provided a 3 per cent pay increase inpublic service wages with at least €90 per month extra going to the lower paid.
“If is is OK for Merkel then it is also right for the pixie heads”, he said.
CPSU president Joan Byrne told the conference the union did not want to see a return to old-style social partnership.
She said those arrangements had “just suited the better off during the boom”.
Ms Byrne called on the Government to confine “the draconian financial emergency legislation to the dustbin of history and to prepare for the return of normal pay bargaining for the public sector”.
She said even if the union succeeded in its demands for the reversal of pay cuts, the Haddington Road agreement had eroded many family-friendly policies for which the union had fought over the last decade.
She said the requirement to work an additional 2.15 hours per week made it almost impossible for many members to work any kind of flexible hours so they could honour their family commitments.
CPSU deputy general secretary Derek Mullen said one of the single biggest threats the union was facing was out-sourcing of services.
He criticised plans by the Department of Social Protection to out-source work activation responsibilities on behalf of the long-term unemployed to the private sector.
“ Currently tenders are being considered from companies who will likely have little or no experience in the delivery of social welfare services and whose sole motivation will again be the underlying profit motive, with payment by result.”