SIPTU is focused on its ongoing campaign for pay rises across the private sector, according to the union’s General President, Jack O’Connor. Responding to speculation concerning the establishment of a process of ‘social dialogue’ with the Government that will include negotiations on public sector pay increases, O’Connor said: “No one has spoken to us here in SIPTU yet about it, I don’t know what they’re going to be saying.“We’re driving a pay agenda here across the private sector, manufacturing and private sector services, and we look forward to talks later on concerning bringing forward the date of the new [pay] increases in the public sector.”He added: “I wouldn’t imagine there will be any bonanza [in public sector pay] and we are not in anyway preoccupied in talking to people who haven’t had much interest in talking to us for the last five or six years.”Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin has said the Government will outline in a spring economic statement the parameters for future pay talks. Howlin said he has a duty to engage with public sector unions about how to unwind financial emergency legislation that underpins pay cuts but that has to be done without putting the country's progress in jeopardy.
O’Connor says SIPTU focus is on pay in private sector
