Just hoping the strikes go away is not a real strategy
The Government needs to differentiate between under-resourcing and pay in the public sector, writes Eoin O’Malley
IF Enda Kenny writes a weekly diary he might chalk it down as a middling week. He’s still Taoiseach, which is a bonus. He had the Dail debate on Apple and it went well enough. He got support for the appeal. He might ask his diary whether Waterford TD John Halligan is ever going to actually resign. At this stage, Kenny might be wishing he’d go. It would put the other lads in the Independent Alliance in their place.
But I wonder would he muse on the impact of the bus strikes that created horrendous traffic for Dubliners this week? The bus strike isn’t going to go away on its own, and if he’s looking a bit further down the road, he’ll see that there are similar problems with the Gardai, who are balloting on what form of industrial action they might take, and secondary school teachers, who could close down most of the country’s secondary schools at the end of October. Strikes tend to deliver other strikes. The Luas strike and subsequent pay deal caused the Dublin Bus strike, so where Gardai and teachers go, nurses are sure to follow.
Under Social Partnership, we’d become so used to industrial peace that strikes had a bit of novelty value. Union leaders were sharpsuited and more familiar with the corridors of power than the average Government TD. Industrial relations was a bit dull, but the novelty of strikes soon wears off.
It’s no coincidence that workers in many sections of the public service are preparing industrial action. They took pay cuts in the hopeful promise those cuts would be temporary. The Lansdowne Road Agreement promised some returns, but obviously not enough for some.
With Budget season upon us, the unions can sense that the Government is weak. It hasn’t been able to bring forward much legislation and has had to retreat on some proposals in face of opposition in the Dail. The unions will exploit this. Michael Noonan acts as if he has very little money to play with, but good growth and solid tax returns mean that people suspect this is a play. They’ll play him back with the threat of strikes.
A union’s power depends on its ability to disrupt public services and at the same time maintain a level of public support. If the public isn’t disrupted by your withdrawal of labour, then why would the Government care? That’s why university lecturers don’t strike or get any special deals, whereas ESB workers were “spoilt”, to use the words of Brendan Ogle, their old union boss. Turning out the lights is a more potent weapon than not turning up for lectures.
With public support, the unions will also know that they can get Fianna Fail on side. A big element of the ‘Confidence and Supply’ deal with Fine Gael focused on reviews of public sector pay. Strikes allow Fianna Fail to attack the Government, and to ramp up its rhetoric on the need to protect public services.
For Government ministers, strikes are often no-win situations. Shane Ross must be wondering what to do. If the minister doesn’t intervene, he can be accused of not caring about an issue that affects people’s lives. If the minister intervenes, he can be accused of undermining labour relations procedures, bullying hard-pressed public sector workers, or using a cheque book to solve a problem, thereby inviting more demands.
No politician likes a strike or the threat of a strike, but skilful politicians use them to gain some advantage. Thatcher enhanced her reputation as the Iron Lady with the miners’ strike. She had prepared by stockpiling coal and using the police to ensure that some coal continued to be extracted. She didn’t enjoy it, and ministers at the time were panicked, but she used miners’ violence to turn the public mood against the strikers.
When he was minister for education in the early 1960s Paddy Hillery faced an ASTI strike — the teachers refused to cooperate with holding or marking the State exams. Hillery adroitly used the teachers’ industrial action to push through education reforms against the wishes of the Catholic hierarchy and the ASTI.
Part of the Government’s problem is that it doesn’t appear to know what it wants — except for the strikes to go away. But that’s not a strategy.
The Government is treating the public sector pay demands as an employer, rather than as a political problem. It sounds like an employer. It naturally wants to limit its pay bill, but the unions are able to link their demands with the quality and provision of public services. Framed like this, the public will back the workers. One thing the election taught us was that voters want more investment in public services.
The Government needs to differentiate the public sector being under-resourced from the public sector workers being under-paid. If it agrees to deal with resourcing, it could mean the public backs it rather than unions. Inflation is low and so there are no real reasons for big pay increases.
But there have been cuts in numbers that have put pressure on hospitals, class sizes and Gardai on the street — the famous front-line workers. If the Government can get the message across that it’s a choice between restoring services to the public or pay increases for the relatively well paid, then it can win these battles — or at least come out unscathed.
There is one group the Government might have sympathy for. New entrants to the public sector (like their private sector equivalents) are paid much less than established public sector workers. Even if you aren’t concerned about their equitable treatment, it is increasingly hard to hire and retain nurses, teachers and Gardai.
The issue for them isn’t low pay. The salaries are good on paper. But when you have to spend half of what’s left after tax renting a room you’ve queued for hours to view, it doesn’t feel like high pay. The answer to this is hardly to increase the pay of the older teachers, nurses and Gardai, most of whom are comfortably paying down their low-interest mortgages.
Kenny might be wondering whether it would be good to bring back Social Partnership. It gave Bertie 10 years in office. But it was very expensive. Instead, he could realise that a lot of the Government’s problems come back to housing. Deal with that, and a lot of your problems go away.