It must have been exciting for Jack O’Connor and all at SIPTU earlier this week. The glory days were back. For years we were used to seeing his face, looking solemn, as he emerged from all-night talks where his members in the public sector were given pay increases in exchange for not going on strike.
But when the financial crisis broke he was being asked to deliver pay cuts and changes in work practices. He couldn’t deliver; social partnership broke down; and he was no longer relevant. So how wonderful it must be to be at the centre of the action once again. Journalists were analysing every twitch of his beard for signs of what it might mean. Twitter was agog.
And when his members rejected the Croke Park II deal it seemed to make him important again. It was lost on him that he had negotiated the deal and had recommended it to his members. Instead he got all ‘father-of-the-nation’ on us and warned against ‘precipitating a major confrontation’ by imposing cuts on working people who are ‘deeply alienated and justifiable aggrieved.’
Even though he’ll be enjoying the attention it’s bad news for him that he was on the wrong side of the argument within his union. But the news must have been taken more badly in government circles, particularly in the Labour party.
In the past few weeks Labour came an embarrassing fifth place in the Meath East by-election and lost another member of its parliamentary party. Many have been questioning Gilmore’s leadership. This is bad news for a few reasons. The minister negotiating this on behalf of the government was Brendan Howlin from Labour.
He needs to find €300m in ‘savings’ (what used to be known as cuts) in the public sector pay bill from this financial year. Finding ‘efficiencies’ won’t work because the savings have to be in real money, and this can only be achieved by pay cuts or longer working hours.
The government seems to think that working mothers rejected the deal because of the increase hours. Reopening negotiations then is pretty pointless because it will mean that another few months will be lost and so the cuts would have to be deeper. Union members will hardly accept a deeper cut than the one they just rejected.
Now it appears the only way to proceed will be to legislate to change employees’ contracts. This will mean Labour TDs and senators will be forced to go vote to cut pay for public sector workers. This is anathema to many of them. In the struggle with their collective conscience, their conscience will lose. The party might find one or two TDs defect to ‘Independent Labour’ but the Labour party will support the legislation.
Why? Because it has to. For Fine Gael this is a headache, but is not going to accept a proposal that waters down the cuts they want to achieve. Its voters are generally happy to cut the public sector wages (even in good times) so why should it compromise on this? This gives Labour a choice: legislate for cuts or pull out of government.
Given its poll ratings, Labour will want to avoid an election. Can Labour TDs really go to the country on this issue? Having reduced child benefit, re-introduced university tuition fees, cut allowances to carers and the disabled, does it really say it that reducing the salaries of the better off public sector workers, and making the lower paid ones work something approximating a full working week was too much for it to stomach?
The other option is to accept that it supports these cuts, receive the self-righteous opprobrium of Sinn Féin, the words of caution (‘We wouldn’t have done it this way’) from Fianna Fáil and hope that the economy finds some sort of corner to turn by 2015. With a choice between certain disaster now or probable disaster in two years, it doesn’t really have a choice.
Eoin O’Malley teaches Irish politics at the School of Law and Government, Dublin City University. He’s on Twitter @AnMailleach
