The Government should set aside Partnership 2000 because it has become "obsolete, irrelevant and redundant", a senior SIPTU official, Mr Jack O'Connor, has told a meeting of regional union representatives in Tullamore, Co Offaly.
In its place, "a special increase should be negotiated for all workers to take account of the economic growth over the last three years". This had far exceeded economic estimates when Partnership 2000 was negotiated.
The pay elements of Partnership 2000 run out next March for the private sector and next September for public service workers.
Mr O'Connor is the SIPTU regional secretary for the midlands and the south-east, where he represents 40,000 workers. His call clearly reflects growing restlessness among the membership of Ireland's largest trade union over the current pay deal.
He has been a critical supporter of national agreements in the past and last November he suggested that a radical new model was needed to succeed Partnership 2000.
"If things are not to be allowed to collapse into an irretrievable mess, the Government must immediately undertake a major initiative with a view to the development of a new consensus model", he said at yesterday's meeting.
Any new model must redress the "inequities" which have emerged in the way the benefits of growth have been distributed. He said that he was not writing off the benefits of social partnership or national agreements. But unions had agreed to set aside agreements in the past at the request of the government or employers during difficult times for the economy.
Times were now different, he said. Over the life of the current agreement labour productivity had been increasing at the rate of 5.2 per cent per annum, but the workers' share of national income had fallen from 75 per cent to 60 per cent. This problem had to be addressed.
As well as special pay increases, any attempt to revive social partnership would also have to include a Government commitment in the 1999 Budget "to deploy £1 billion towards reforming the tax system in the direction of ensuring that 80 per cent of taxpayers only pay at the standard rate". There could be no "rigid pay formula based only on inflation, even if the figures are increased to include the cost of housing," he said. "What is needed now is a looser framework in which perimeters are set on an industry and sectoral basis."
This would allow workers to deal with anomalies which had built up over 13 years of tight pay agreements and still allow for "an agreed social contract focused on addressing the housing crisis, reducing hospital waiting lists, providing a strategic development plan for the aged, prioritising childcare and eliminating poverty". Mr O'Connor said he had developed these proposals from participating in the union's consultative process with activists, including over 600 shop stewards in his own two regions.
A survey of shop stewards showed that 32 per cent still favoured some form of national wage deal, but that 57 per cent preferred a combination of local and national bargaining.