Public sector must accept pay offer
NEITHER the Government nor the trade unions representing more than 300,000 public servants got everything they sought in the pay talks concluded last week. They produced a compromise agreement with enough for both sides to be satisfied. Certainly the Government, in the form of Paschal Donohoe, the Minister for Public Expenditure, and new Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar, seemed pleased, not least with the speedy manner of the proceedings.
The deal will cost the taxpayer €880m over three years commencing next January, but the first instalment to be paid in 2018 will amount to €180m, which will leave about €350m for any tax cuts, public service improvements or capital expenditure.
For the public service trade unions, the deal represents an opportunity to see 90pc of their membership claw back by 2020 what they lost in the recession, and get ahead of inflation. The average pay increase will be around 6.6pc with the majority, 250,000 people, getting between 6.2pc and 7.4pc while a further 50,000 recruited since 2013 on less generous pension terms will get 7pc to 10pc. In cash terms, the vast majority of public servants will see their salaries rise by between €4,000 and €5,400. Gardai, prison officers and military personnel (about 23,000 people) who have faster-accruing pension terms will get lesser increases.
Some union representatives might have hoped for an end to the pension levy on the not unreasonable grounds that it was introduced in 2009 as a temporary emergency measure. But public service pensions and the way in which they are largely funded from general taxation, together with the permanent nature of employment, have always been the Achilles heel of the public service unions’ pay argument. So they can’t grumble with the decision to convert the levy into a permanent pension contribution to help solve a long-standing anomaly.
There is still some housekeeping to be done on less significant side agreements, and further discussion on how to encourage recruitment and retention in the health service, but that will probably be assigned to the Public Service Pay Commission for recommendation next year. Some will not be pleased that the Government has insisted on retaining the facility for additional unpaid working hours on the grounds of cost, and the failure to fully deal with the two-tier pay system will rankle. But on the plus side for the unions, the Government has dropped proposals to relax existing restrictions on the outsourcing of public services. It also withdrew a proposal to extend Saturday working.
When all of these factors are considered, this is a good deal for those who work in the public service, and that is nothing more than their due. They shared in the suffering of the recession and now as the economy shows appreciable signs of recovery, they are as entitled as their private sector counterparts to share in these better times. By world standards, we have a highly educated and highly efficient public service and, just as importantly, we have a public service that is a model of propriety and free from the kind of corruption that bedevils bureaucracies elsewhere.
Let us not begrudge a penny of what has been agreed and let us earnestly hope it will be accepted by those it will benefit when they come to consider the offer and vote on it in the coming months. They are unlikely to do better.