All promotions in the public service should be performance based and new models for measuring productivity must be found if the current deadlock on public service pay is to be resolved. These are among the key proposals in a report prepared for the Government.
The report suggests public service pay is now of such importance to the economy that a consensus must be found embracing not just the social partners but all political parties.
Prepared by Fitzpatrick Associates, economic consultants, it says: "The pay reform process will ideally require the type of consistent policy consensus that has attached to such historically potentially sensitive issues as the promotion of inward foreign investment."
While it welcomes the impact so far of the Strategic Management Initiative (SMI) in modernising the public service, it warns that, "the SMI approach of largely `mandarin revolution' cannot be relied upon as the process moves towards pay issues".
Yesterday the public service committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions met to consider the proposals.
While it remains unclear if Partnership 2000 can be salvaged in the face of mounting public sector pay claims, the report provides the most likely blueprint for a pay deal involving the State's 200,000 employees.
It focuses primarily on the issue of relativities which has bedevilled public service pay since the 1980s. It says some jointly agreed criteria are needed to measure "inputs" (in the form of the qualifications and competence of staff) and "outputs" (in terms of productivity). This could result in the introduction of gain-sharing techniques, based on rewarding either teams or individuals.
However the report adds that "performance related pay is not the potential panacea for all the apparent ills of the Irish (or any other) public service. It is at best but one part of the wider reforms needed to bring the public sector more into line with modern management philosophies and practices".
It also says that such a system would "require levels of HR (human resources) management skill which are often currently absent in the Irish public service".
It proposes that "some kind of central resources or expertise" be established "across the public service to help with these difficult issues".
The report suggests that "PRP (performance-related pay) readiness audits" would be an essential step to negotiating PRP agreements in sectors of the public service. This would "increase openness and transparency" while "any attempts to introduce performance-related pay `by stealth' are likely to postpone eventual problems".
It recommends a partnership approach to public service pay but cautions that this could "also cause difficulties. Groups who saw themselves as being discommoded could potentially veto the whole process".
The report says there will need to be a balance between the wider public interest and achievement of full consensus.
Granting government departments and agencies greater autonomy over budgets, already being planned under the SMI, would facilitate localised bargaining, according to the report.
However, agreement on a number of principles at national level, such as "minimisation of any productivity element of any pay increases over and above inflation" would be a prerequisite for localised bargaining.
Productivity at local level could be negotiated on the basis of "agreed levels of performance by the group or team, e.g. volume of activity, quality of service, enhancement skills/competencies".
Trade union leaders have so far balked at the idea of introducing many aspects of PRP practices from the private sector and senior civil servants showed little imagination in tackling the relativities issue under the disastrous local bargaining clause of the Programme for Competitiveness and Work.