A key feature of the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness is the establishment of the Public Service Benchmarking Body to review the pay of public servants. Benchmarking is basically about fixing public service pay rates on the basis of fair comparison with pay rates across the economy.
This is not new. Comparison with the private sector has traditionally been the basis for determining the pay of public servants. Since 1987, the various national programmes have served this State well. We have rebuilt our economy, grown employment levels and we have all become more prosperous.
However, the rigidities of the programmes have created anomalies and, in the case of the public service, there has been a growing sense that salary levels of public servants are falling behind those of their private sector neighbours and friends. This has manifested itself in obvious ways, such as the clear fall-off in applications for public service jobs.
This is not sustainable. We need good quality staff to run modern public services, and it is unfair for the rest of society to pay its public sector employees less than they are paid themselves. It is to the credit of the Government negotiators that they acknowledged this in the discussions on the PPF by acceding to the unions' demands for a review of pay of all public servants through the benchmarking process.
While benchmarking is not different in principle from the basic approach taken in the past, it has important features which are novel.
Firstly, the parties to the PPF recognised that it was important that the whole exercise would be supported by objective research on pay and jobs in the private sector and the public service. Secondly, the fact that a single body will make an assessment of the rates of pay of all public servants, at the same time and against the background of the same information and criteria, should make for a much fairer and more comprehensive approach.
This will be particularly so in addressing the problems created by the Programme for Competitiveness and Work (PCW) restructuring experience when different procedures, different timings and different criteria created enormous industrial relations problems
Implementing the principle of comparison with the private sector can only be addressed properly if it is done in a fair and comprehensive way. It has to involve detailed analysis of jobs and pay across the public and private sectors. The analysis has to be conducted independently and be fully resourced. Those involved need the opportunity to argue their cases, as they would normally do before the Labour Court and the public service arbitration boards.
The Public Service Benchmarking Body meets all of these requirements. It is a totally independent body, chaired by a High Court judge. Its membership includes a mix of people with wide industrial relations experience (such as Billy Attley, former general secretary of SIPTU, and Phil Flynn, former president of the ICTU) and others who bring important perspectives to bear from a wider field. It has a strong, independent research capability and a well-staffed secretariat, including trade union experts.
It will involve written submissions by, and oral hearings with, both sides. Ultimately, the benchmarking body will recommend rates of pay for all groups covered, as does the Labour Court, arbitration boards and the Buckley Review Body - the last, incidentally, an example of benchmarking in practice. Also, we have a guarantee that the recommendations will begin being implemented from December of this year.
Benchmarking is essentially about ensuring that public servants receive a fair level of pay by reference to the private sector and that the public service can recruit, retain and motivate its staff. The benchmarking body is not restricted by any predetermined limitations: it will evaluate each case on its merits and on the basis of its research.
The body will examine the jobs as they currently exist and actually operate. It will take account of factors peculiar to particular sectors and the up-to-date nature of the comparison will necessarily embrace all aspects of public service jobs, including, by definition, any past productivity. It will examine the total reward packages (pay and non-pay) to compare like with like.
Despite suggestions to the contrary, the body is not required to recommend the introduction of individual performance-related pay in the public service. It will review the pay of a very wide range of categories including administrative staff, professional and technical staff, nurses, teachers and lecturers in third-level education, prison staff, gardai, social workers, doctors, dentists and paramedical staff.
The Public Services Committee of ICTU cannot see why any public service group would have anything to fear from benchmarking given that it is an independent process and provides for a strong input by unions to ensure that all relevant considerations are dealt with fully.
While technically new in operational terms, benchmarking is not an exotic philosophy which bears no relation to how we have determined public service pay in the past. The elements outlined above are all very familiar to those experienced in pay determination and industrial relations. As mentioned above, the pay of top public servants has, for decades, been set by a benchmarking process.
Benchmarking is a logical, consistent way of determining public service pay by reference to the private sector.
We now have a way of progressing a pay review for members by reference to comparison with pay rates in the private sector. Everyone can have their say and every factor can be taken into account. This is what we wanted. We are devoting our efforts to putting forward the best cases to the benchmarking body with a view to maximising the benefits for members.
An essential feature of benchmarking is a review of all key public service groups as one single task. That such fair comparison is made for all groups in the public service at the same time is vital, because having the pay of any one category of public servants examined by a separate group or on a different timescale would be selective, unfair, unacceptable to other groups and incompatible with PPF.
Dan Murphy is secretary of the Public Services Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and general secretary of the Public Service Executive Union