Parents, patients and public services users of all stripes look on with growing trepidation as negotiations between unions representing public sector workers and the Government have broken down, raising the spectre of that dreaded euphemism, “disruption”, over the coming weeks.
The crux of disagreement is that the unions want agreement on pay increases to protect against inflation before they will discuss anything else, such as changes to working practices; the Government wants everything on the table, all at once, all over again, now that the existing collective agreement has expired.
The unions have threatened industrial action if there is no movement between the sides. Some unions may be inclined towards taking strike action in September when schools and colleges reopen to students, for maximum leverage and, yes, disruption.
Indeed, comparisons have already been drawn between the disruption caused by fuel protests earlier in the year and the potential disruption from public sector strikes. One line of thinking in Government and the media at that time, which clearly did not win out, was that to “give in” to the disruptive fuel protesters would encourage trade unions to become more bolshie.
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And lo, they say, the chickens are coming home to roost.
Not so fast. Whatever one thinks of the aims and means of the fuel protests, there is a world of difference between those protests and the current risk of public sector strikes. Those of us who support trade unions and collective bargaining must be careful to stress this point over and over again, even as the criticism of public sector workers taking industrial action ramps up (as it undoubtedly will if these strikes go ahead).
The differences are threefold. First, even if the effects feel the same, lawful strike action is a far more legitimate form of disruption. To call a strike in Ireland, as in most countries, union leaders must persuade a majority of their members to vote in a secret ballot for industrial action. They must give notice to the employer.
They cannot force anyone to join the union or the strike (though of course they will try to persuade them to do so, in solidarity and in recognition of their best interests).
Union leaders are elected by their members to sit down with employers and agree a deal, which will be sent back to members to vote whether to accept it or continue the strike. The fuel protests demonstrated the difficulties of the democratically elected Government negotiating with self-appointed spokespeople who are not representative of anybody, and cannot agree anything that is binding for as much as the members of a single WhatsApp group. Trade unions are different because they are democratic organisations recognised by law as part of the policymaking process.
Second, the question of how public services are run is central to the functioning of a modern state. Writing in these pages earlier this week, Gerard Howlin called for the Government to scale back on public servants working remotely as part of a pay deal. This reflects a common but misguided view that the resources of the State (including its human resources, namely public sector workers) are the government of the day’s to command.
That is the logic which led the last Conservative government in the United Kingdom to introduce a law in 2023 obliging union members to break their own union’s lawful strikes, to provide a “minimum service level” to the public. That law proved totally unworkable and was repealed last year by the Labour government.
The delivery of effective public services is a collaboration between elected politicians setting policy goals, taxpayers providing funding, and public sector workers investing their labour into their workplaces (schools, hospitals, fire stations and so on.) That collaboration requires sustained, good-faith negotiation between government and workers’ representatives.
This collaborative approach is, thankfully, the traditional culture within public sector industrial relations in this country. However, the command-and-control style will certainly be recognisable to private sector workers, which perhaps explains some of the resentment towards public sector workers, particularly when they go on strike.
Finally, the occasional strike, even a very disruptive one, is a normal part of healthy industrial relations – and strikes in Ireland are very occasional indeed. Employers (whether public or private) should engage in collective bargaining with trade unions representing workers. But we know they only do so when making a deal is less costly than whatever disruption would be caused by negotiations breaking down. Often, that disruption manifests in workers leaving their jobs for better-paid ones, or employers finding it hard to hire new suitably qualified workers.
A strike is, in essence, compressing into a single sharp shock the longer-term attrition of staff shortages which are inevitable if workers are not happy, and which we are familiar with across the public and private sectors in recent years.
This will be particularly evident if the Government insists on, say, getting strict about remote working without union agreement. Trading pay increases for more days in the office is giving with one hand and taking with the other, as public servants will face higher commuting and housing costs. It will be no easier to attract and retain highly qualified staff.
I don’t want to open my copy of The Irish Times in September to read the usual suspects bewailing the disruption “trade unions are inflicting” upon the health and education services, and so on.
Teachers want to teach, doctors and nurses want to care for patients, firefighters want to extinguish fires, and so on. We just don’t want to lose money year-on-year for doing our jobs, which is what a failure to protect our pay from inflation means.
To those who say that public sector workers already have it better than most, whether on pay, remote working or other conditions of employment – I wholeheartedly agree. Why is that? Because we join trade unions at a much higher rate than private sector workers, bargain collectively with our employers and are willing to take industrial action to protect our working conditions.
If you are annoyed by “public sector perks” or the disruption caused by strikes, imagine how annoyed your boss would be if you joined a union too.
Dr Alan Eustace is an assistant professor in the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin. He is a member of a trade union but writes here in a personal capacity.
