It began with the nurses last year. If ever there was an example of a hard case making for bad industrial relations policy, the nurses' dispute was it. In effect, there have been two Programmes for Competitiveness and Work: the first operated before the nurses' dispute and the second has emerged since.
The 3 per cent ceiling on pay increases under the local bargaining clause of the PCW was stretched to an average 5.5 per cent in the pre-nurse deals. Afterwards, its elasticity increased dramatically. It is generally conceded that the real cost to the Exchequer of the increase for nurses was between 15 per cent and 18 per cent. No one who followed them has done better but subsequent deals saw workers come within two or three percentage points.
Of course, a very strong case was made for the nurses. They had fallen well behind in the public service pay stakes since the early 1980s, the job had become much more highly skilled and demanding and, above all, they had the public on their side.
No government could face the prospect of hospitals closing and the health service collapsing in order to deny such a deserving group, especially when the Exchequer coffers were bulging.
Although the Government, the Labour Court, the Irish Business and Employers' Confederation and even the Irish Congress of Trade Unions gave the nurses' award a clean bill of health, they could not stop the spread of big public service pay claims.
First it was paramedics and social workers, then ambulance drivers and prison officers, now it is gardai.
Gardai are now being offered a variation of the prison officers' deal. While the Government will insist that it remains within the PCW parameters, few trade unionists believe it.
The first and most fundamental problem with this assertion is that gardai already negotiated a local bargain increase under the PCW as far back as 1994. On that occasion, they conceded pay moderation in return for having various allowances consolidated into their pensions. It led to the split in the GRA, its reunification and the rise, phoenix-like, of a brand new claim under the PCW.
Members of other public service unions will be asking their leaders: "If the GRA can negotiate two pay rises under the PCW, why not us?"
They will also be asking why the GRA is being offered a flat increase of 5.5 per cent under the PCW, plus another 1.5 per cent for productivity. Taken with the 3 per cent already won in better pensions, the GRA has now been offered the equivalent of 10 per cent under the "3 per cent" local bargaining clause.
There are various ways in which the public service unions can approach the issue. One is to present retrospective claims, like the GRA, to the Government. An alternative is to seek to expand the terms of the 2 per cent local bargaining clause under Partnership 2000. This, however, does not "kick-in" for another 12 months in the public service.
The public service unions may make a joint claim, or decide it is better to process its own - each jockeying for position.
Particularly aggrieved will be groups like executive officers in the public service and local authority officials. They took the local bargaining clause of the PCW at face value and negotiated meaningful productivity for modest pay rises in the belief that the same rules would apply to everyone.
For the moment, most senior public service trade union leaders are staying relatively quiet. "We don't want to make the Garda dispute any more difficult than it is, and we don't even know if they're going to accept the offer," one said yesterday. "But there is no doubt other people are going to follow."
If the public service unions are successful in reopening the PCW, or renegotiating the local bargaining clause of Partnership 2000, the private sector unions will not be far behind. There is already a perception in the private sector that the current round of national agreements is leading to a two-tier wage system.
Not only are public sector workers doing better in terms of local bargaining agreements but they are also benefiting from radical new gain sharing arrangements. The Telecom Eireann share option scheme for employees and the £54.6 million buy-out of letters of guarantee on offer to TEAM Aer Lingus workers are the latest and most dramatic manifestations of this.
While Telecom and TEAM workers are being asked for major concessions in work practices in return, the potential rewards are beyond the dreams of their private sector colleagues.
Of course, not all public sector workers are so fortunate. Many employees in sectors which are not being privatised are still on low pay. For instance train drivers, who are being asked to accept drastic cuts in overtime as part of an Iarnrod Eireann viability plan, have a basic pay rate of £266 a week. Most of them earn double that due to overtime and shift allowances and the threat of strike action this Sunday is an indication of how worried some of them are.
Iarnrod Eireann can at least plead inability to pay. In the private sector, there are thousands of workers employed in highly-profitable companies who are regaining their confidence after the battering trade unions took in the 1980s. Some of them are too young to even remember the 1980s - all they have known is growth.
The recent victory of SIPTU in the Supreme Court union recognition case involving Nolan Transport was another boost to that self-confidence. So was the way in which bricklayers in Dublin and Limerick successfully defied High Court injunctions in disputes to stop subcontracting on sites.
Other young, and not so young, trade unionists are learning that militancy works. A tightening labour market and a sense of confidence in their own worth means that many of them will be happy to follow the lead of others, including that of gardai
The sheer speed and variety of change in the workplace makes it hard for trade union or employer bodies to monitor, let alone control. The lesson from the GRA dispute is that if the discontent of large groups is left to fester outside the system, the consequences will eventually be felt by all.