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Trade Unions Suspend Strike for Thursday Dec 3rd
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It is interesting to counterpost the wisps of information on an emerging deal with the unions and what we appear to have learned about the budget earlier this evening.
Union sources said the Government had acknowledged that enough progress had been made in talks on an alternative solution to the Government’s pay cuts proposition to warrant deferring the strike.
The sources acknowledged that what were described as ‘a few loose ends’ remained to be tied up in relation to the modernisation agenda and additional savings to secure money needed by the Government in 2010.
As yet, no overall modernisation agenda had been fully finalised and no final agreement on the transformation deal for the Health Sector has been agreed.
In addition, no figure for the savings to be secured from the unions unpaid leave proposal has been finalised.
They appear to have gotten their €1bn from the unions. Whether it comes from the idea earlier in the week of unpaid leave/reduced overtime and contract work or via an outright basic pay cut remains to be seen.
Something doesn’t add up. The unions had always presented base pay as non-negotiable, at least as I understood their position. And any 2010 “bridging mechanisms” would be unlikely to pass European Commission muster, as the budget deficit is clearly structural — measures would have to show persistent gains to 2013 for Brian Lenihan to convince them of their effectiveness (even if he was speaking in French).
It looks like the figure for savings is going from €1.3bn through to TV3′s €1bn and on down to an €800 figure reported in this morning’s Irish Times.
Govt sources say its €750m worht of savings with pay rates unaffected but pay lost for 12 days unpaid leave. It will hurt lower paid public workers worse than higher on the face of it (though who knows how it will work?
Notably talks on transformation of services are breaking down at the same time as the deal is agreed according to the final lines of that IT report.
Sounds like those ‘union sources’ were a bit over-optimistic. In the Dail this morning the Taoiseach said the proposals “don’t provide the basis for an agreement”, adding that the savings must be “permanent”.
“Those savings have to be made because the Government does not have the money to pay the public sector pay bill as it is presently constituted,” he is quoted as saying by the IT Industry Correspondent.
As P. points out above, the Government don’t have much choice about the permanency of any adjustments to the public pay bill. Even if the EC let them get away with a ‘bridging mechanism’ fudge in this Budget, they would only be creating trouble for themselves as they would arguably have to face up to the same problem in the next one, and the one after that.
The politics are interesting too, as no doubt Cowen will not want to see any more “Cowen caves in to Unions” headlines, as appeared in this morning’s Indo.