Lansdowne Road deal needs correction, says union chief

The future of the Lansdowne Road public service pay deal is in “considerable doubt” as a result of recent industrial relations developments , the general secretary of the country’s largest craft union, has said.

In an address to his union's biennial conference in Portlaoise at the weekend Paddy Kavanagh, general secretary of the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU), said the agreement was in urgent need of correction.

He said the union was calling for “a clear and unambiguous timetable” for the unwinding of financial emergency legislation, known as Fempi, which underpinned pay cuts in the public service over recent years.

Mr Kavanagh also said the union wanted to see full pay restoration for workers in the public service.

The TEEU is the country’s largest craft union with about 45,000 members in both the private sector – largely in power industry, manufacturing, construction, electrical and mechanical contracting – and public service.

Mr Kavanagh said the union wanted to see the Government establish publicly-owned building companies to compete for urgently-needed public and private contracts in housing and other infrastructural projects.

Exploitation of workers

It also wanted the Government to introduce legislation “to make the recruitment and exploitation of workers on bogus self-employed contracts a criminal offence”.

Mr Kavanagh said offenders should be struck off the directors’ register, while fines should be based on the amount of PAYE and PRSI revenue lost to the State.

He argued offending companies should be barred from tendering for State contracts and said there should be provision for imprisonment of serious offenders. Austerity over recent year had “tested workers’ resolve to the limit” and generated a “deliberately-generated climate of fear”, with many workers remaining deeply disaffected and feeling they were not benefitting from the recovery. However, he said that unions such as his own were now gaining ground as the economy recovered.

He said the union had recruited more than 8,500 members since the beginning of 2014, secured recognition in 96 new companies and negotiated pay rises of between 5 and 10 per cent in the electrical and mechanical contracting industries.

About 2,000 members of the UK-based UCATT construction union had also voted to join the TEEU, he added.

Speaking on the conference theme of constructing the recovery, he said: “The social partners, who all have a stake in a planned, structured and sustained recovery can learn from the mistakes of the past to develop a new society based on social inclusion and a recognition that, in order to flourish, we need a successful economy that generates wealth for all, not just the few at the expense of the many.”