Details of what the Government expects from public sector workers in terms of flexibility and adaptability in return for pay increases will be spelt out by September.
Officials from public service unions and the Department of Finance met yesterday afternoon to discuss the modernisation and change element of the benchmarking report. It was agreed Department officials would outline their proposals for change in a document to be handed to unions at their next meeting on September 11th.
The chairman of ICTU's public services committee, Mr Peter McLoone, said that once the discussion document was produced, both sides would meet on a weekly basis, "with a view to bringing negotiations on the whole report to finality by the end of November".
Mr McLoone, who is also general secretary of IMPACT, the State's largest public sector union, said the benchmarking report could not be implemented until public service workers knew what was expected of them in terms of "change, modernisation, flexibility and adaptability".