Public Sector Pay Deal Vote Shows Need For Grassroots To Organise

Out of 19 unions voting on the Public Sector pay deal only one rejected the day deal. The Veterinary Association!

Before this writer urges socialists to dress up as vets and flock to recruit them to a grassroots trade union strategy I would like to breakdown the figures from the RTE report.

SIPTU 90% YES FORSA 94% YES INTO 82% YES

On paper this is an emphatic victory for the trade union bureaucrats in the Public Services Committee (PAC) and they will say it’s a great deal for the 385,000 members working in the Public Sector, but in reality there’s real anger and apathy towards this deal.

Many workers felt delighted when the ICTU union negotiation team rejected the government offer of 8.5% from Minster Pascal Donohue TD.

Union leaders even went on the media after the vote took place saying it wasn’t enough. But they persuaded members to vote for it and then hope this show of good faith to the government will impress the government into giving more? Madness.

With the local and European elections in June the union negotiators could have balloted or threatened to ballot their members to shut down the country and turned off the tap of profit and forced concessions.

However they went back in and Pascal offered a mere 1.75% increase when you look at the figures closely.

The local bargain part of the deal won’t be finalised until June and all the unions have agreed not to ballot for industrial action for the duration of the deal.

The deal is backdated from January 2024 and goes until June 2026, even if the local bargaining is reneged upon.

The no strike agreement ties workers hand and foot.

INTO had 82% YES, but only 53% of their 40,000 members bothered to vote. 17,000 felt disenfranchised by their union leadership and 18% still said NO.

FORSA voted 94% YES, but they revealed that 26,000 couldn’t be bothered to vote and nearly 4,000 still voted against the deal.

SIPTU achieved 90% but again a lot of their members didn’t vote despite pressure from above.

What does this mean for socialists within the trade unions?

We need to seek out all the thousands of militant workers in every union who saw through the government and trade union bureaucrats spin. We need to reach out to those who may be on the verge of quitting their union due to feeling let down.

RTE say 4.25% will be increased in low paid workers pockets for 2024, but taking into the increased inflation costs due to greed of big business - It’s generally agreed that pay rises need to reach 8.9% alone just to cover electric bills and food price from 2023 to the end of the current year.

To the thousands who voted no - join us in building organised grassroots opposition in our unions and we can force them to fight.