Workers are expected to receive little or no increase when the benchmarking body reports this month, writes Martin Wall,Industry Correspondent.
In the memorable phrase of former teaching union leader Joe O'Toole, the first benchmarking process was equivalent to public servants withdrawing money from a cash machine.
On this occasion, however, it seems likely that the unions will find that their ATM card will be rejected.
There is now a general expectation among both public sector management and unions that large numbers, if not the majority, of workers will receive little or no increase when the second independent benchmarking body reports this month.
It is anticipated that the benchmarking body will discount awards for many groups to take account of the value of public service pensions at a time when many private sector workers are having to rely on less secure defined contribution schemes.
Some informed sources have suggested that this discount could be as high as 12 to 15 per cent, and that this would be the main reason for zero awards in most cases.
There is also a growing expectation that the main beneficiaries under the new report will be those at senior level or more highly-skilled personnel
The benchmarking body, which is chaired by senior counsel Dan O'Keeffe and includes members from both a trade union and business and management background, was established by the Government exactly two years ago to carry out "a fundamental examination of the pay of public service employees vis-a-vis the private sector".
As part of the process the pay of about 300,000 public sector staff, including civil servants, gardaí, teachers, nurses and thousands of health sector personnel, will be assessed.
Under the previous benchmarking exercise in 2002, civil and public service grades received increases of 8.9 per cent on average, although some groups got considerably more.
Overall, the 2002 benchmarking process added around €1.2 billion per year to the exchequer's pay bill.
However, in recent weeks unions leaders have been making big efforts to dampen down expectations among members that increases on this scale will be recommended this time around.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has also followed a similar theme in recent weeks.
Speaking in November he said that he did not know what level of pay increase the benchmarking body would come up with this time, but admitted that there was a "sense" that the awards would not be as generous as 2002.
He said benchmarking was a process based on examining comparable roles in the public and private sectors - but that people had felt the awards in 2002 were very high.
He said this was because at that time private sector pay had experienced a significant "bounce" - a phenomenon which has not been repeated since.
This line was very much in keeping with the view of the Department of Finance which almost from the start of the current process has been pressing to ensure that similar increases to 2002 will not occur again.
In its submission to the benchmarking body, the Department of Finance said that public service employers were not aware of any clear evidence of significant upward drift in pay levels in the wider economy since 2002. The Department of Finance also argued that there had been a number of reports indicating that public service pay had moved ahead of that in the private sector.
Employers' group Ibec claimed workers in the public sector on average earned substantially more than those in the private sector.
It said that when other elements of pay and non-pay benefits such as very valuable pension schemes, working hours, annual leave and job security were taken into account, "the reward premium enjoyed by public sector workers increases even further".
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions argued that given there was full employment in the economy that any value attached to security of tenure enjoyed by public servants "should be very small indeed".
It also argued against the benchmarking body making deductions from recommended increases to take account of the value of public sector pensions.
Although the first benchmarking report attracted a lot of criticism largely due to a perceived lack of transparency on how it reached its conclusions, for the Government it represented a break with a then highly-controversial prevailing system of cross-sectoral pay relativities between groups in the public sector.
Under this complex pattern of pay links, increases, for example, for middle-grade civil servants in turn led to increases for administrative staff in the health service and local authorities, which in turn triggered rises for nurses and subsequently gardaí, firefighters and others.
Benchmarking was the new model developed for assessing public sector pay while getting away from the traditional approach, which by the late 1990s had become untenable for both management and many union leaders.
This time around the terms of reference for the benchmarking body stipulate that it should "seek to ensure the optimum level of transparency consistent with the efficient and effective operation of the process".
However, it is highly unlikely that the level of material published this time around, just like the awards themselves, will satisfy everybody.