Ireland's public sector pay talks are in the week their lead negotiator said would settle the question. Unions and government officials returned to face-to-face meetings at the Workplace Relations Commission on Monday, a bank holiday, and are back for a second day today. No draft agreement has been published.
Kevin Callinan, general secretary of Forsa, told members on Friday that he could not say whether a draft would be possible. He did say he believed the current process would conclude at some point this week, "with or without an agreement". That is the sentence schools, hospitals and government departments are now living inside. The work to rule remains in place while the talks run. A second 24-hour strike, which had been due last Wednesday, stays suspended.
About 400,000 public servants are covered. The last national wage deal expired in the summer. Union leaders walked away from exploratory talks in June and insisted that pay and the cost of living had to be the first item, not a later one. A one-day stoppage on 14 October closed schools and cancelled thousands of medical appointments. That stoppage is what got the two sides back into the room.
What Callinan has and has not promised
Friday's note to members was careful. Negotiations of this scale are "slow and arduous", he said, and this one is no different. The union side had met every day last week, with work continuing over the weekend, and face-to-face talks were likely to resume on Monday. They did. He credited members for the strike, which he said had "sent a very strong message to Government", and he asked them to keep following the work-to-rule instructions for their own workplaces.
He has not moved off the line that a text may not appear. That matters, because earlier in the talks there were hints of movement, including from Callinan himself after the first formal session. The silence from inside the WRC yesterday was read, as it was last week, as a sign that people are still talking rather than briefing. It is not the same thing as a number.
The money both sides can see
The Irish Times has reported that unions want the government to go beyond the 1.2 billion euro set aside in this month's budget, and that the coalition could stretch toward 1.6 billion euro. Neither figure has been confirmed as an offer on the table. Both explain why a week of meetings can still end with a statement and no deal. A public sector settlement is watched by private employers. Ministers know that. So do the unions.
Adrian Kane, Siptu's deputy general secretary, told a conference in Galway on Friday that the government faced an "army of citizens" looking for fair pay, and that no single set of talks could "resolve all our woes". He said the instinct in a high-inflation period would be to suppress wages, and that pay without investment in services would push work out to contractors. The work to rule is the leverage that remains if Friday comes with no paper.
Where the Dispute Stands on Tuesday
- About 400,000 public servants are covered. The work to rule continues.
- Face-to-face talks resumed on Monday and continue today at the WRC.
- Forsa expects the process to end this week, with or without a draft.
- Unions want more than the 1.2 billion euro in the budget. A stretch to 1.6 billion euro has been reported, not confirmed.
- The second strike stays off. The first, on 14 October, is what reopened the talks.
For British readers, the rhyme with tomorrow's Budget in London is only partial. Both finance ministries are trying to answer a cost of living argument without resetting every wage in the public sector at once. Dublin is doing it across a table. Westminster is doing it in a speech. If you want how Ireland got to this Tuesday, start with yesterday's account of the return to the WRC, and with the decision to suspend the strike and open formal talks.