With workers struggling under significant and ongoing cost-of-living increases, Government has refused to open meaningful negotiations on public sector pay and conditions since the last Public Sector Agreement expired in June.
With the value of wages declining in real terms by the week, workers have been left with little choice but to take action to persuade the government to open discussions.
And so, purely because of their own failure to engage productively, the government risks facing into a ‘winter of discontent’. The government, for its part, admits that a successor agreement should happen, but want to wait until after Budget Day to start any discussions.
An astute reader will have noticed some careful qualifiers in my description of the government position: they speak of a willingness to bargain, but their actions have not inspired confidence. In many respects they are like St Augustine, promising virtue, but not yet... They imply that the budgetary package will include some provision for pay arrangements, but won’t negotiate with unions on what that provision will be, essentially dictating the shape (if not the detail ) of any agreement before any negotiations have taken place.
The few preliminary discussions held over the summer did not help: there was no sense that the government was open to sitting down with workers to address pay erosion as a result of the cost-of-living crisis.
Given their record of listening to the loudest voices in the room - from fuel protests to VAT reduction requests - it makes sense for workers to make a little noise, to encourage Government to return to the table, and have a realistic conversation about the strain families and employees are under, and what can be done to relieve it.
Unfortunately, the nature of public service work is that any industrial action taken will impact upon the public, while the target of the action is Government itself.
Surviving, thriving or striking?
That is why unions and workers have been careful to design actions that, yes, disrupt business as usual, but are intended to encourage government back to the table through progressive action.
The INTO, for example, is starting by pausing cooperation with ‘Croke Park Hours’, under which teachers provide additional services throughout the workweek. It is only if the dispute continues that they will progress to a 24-hour stoppage.
Similarly, my own union (IFUT ) is starting with a one-hour stoppage, and if insufficient action is seen from government, we will then progress to 24-hour stoppages.
As someone working in third-level education, I am also acutely aware that lack of adequate funding by government - for a decade or more - is endangering the very viability of the sector. The Cassells Report, completed in 2016, estimated that our third-level sector would need an additional €600m annually by 2021, and €1bn annually by 2030, to address existing underfunding, projected increases in student numbers, and other budgetary pressures.
The government dealt with that underfunding in 2022 - by defining it downward to roughly €300m of a ‘core funding’ gap. Put bluntly, the sector is surviving rather than thriving.
The Irish Universities Association estimates the current funding gap for the traditional universities alone is around €250m. That’s made up of a mix of much of the existing gap identified in 2022, along with subsequent pressures that have emerged, such as increases in student numbers and unfunded pay mandates.
It has been widely reported that my own institution is under particular stress. The Irish Times notes that an operating surplus of €13.6m in 2023-24 has evolved to become a projected deficit of €10m in 2026-27 - and that’s after its constituent colleges were directed to make ‘savings’ of 7 per cent at short notice over the summer.
RTÉ notes that my IFUT colleague Alastair McKinstry estimates that those 7 per cent cuts for the now-current year will impact up to 1,000 jobs at the university - and by that we mean fixed-term employees who will not have contracts renewed, or whose positions will not be filled in the first place.
We are now seeing very clearly what we mean by precarious employment, and the impacts, firstly and importantly, on individuals who are now without an income, as well as on the wider university community, who are missing the services - the value - that those people, those jobs, provided to the institution.
It is for those reasons that we are seeing students themselves, nationally and locally, take action to push for improved funding of the sector.
So, for the first time in my working life, I will be striking.
The government must come to the table and bargain openly, and fairly, with workers. And they must ensure that those they entrust with operating the various branches of the public service, including universities, have the funding needed to make good on any deal achieved, and to provide the service that the public deserves.
Dr Andrew Ó Baoill is a lecturer at the School of English, Media and Creative Arts at University of Galway.
