SIPTU to ballot members on public sector pay deal

SIPTU has announced plans for a ballot of members on the new public sector pay deal.

The union’s executive is recommending acceptance of the agreement which will provide for pay increases of 10.25% and over a two-and-a-half year period.

The deal is estimated to be worth up to 17.3% for lower paid workers.

Agreement was reached last week following talks at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) involving unions, staff association and Government representatives.

“The pay proposals secured by SIPTU and the other unions in these negotiations are crucially structured in a manner that is consistent with the outcome of previous agreements which prioritise the position of lower and middle-income earners,” SIPTU said in a statement.

The deal will be put to a vote of SIPTU public sector members in a secret ballot to be held from Monday February 12 to Wednesday March 20.

Yesterday, Fórsa, the country’s largest public service trade union, said it will commence a ballot of members on 19 February.

The previous public service pay agreement, Building Momentum, expired on 31 December 2023 and the proposed new deal will run from January 2024 to June 2026.

The 19 unions affiliated to the Public Services Committee (PSC) of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), have until Monday 25 March to complete ballots of their members.

If the deal is ratified, the first of a series of pay increases will come in the form a 2.25% increase backdated to 1 January.

The pay deal will cost around €3.6 billion and includes a local bargaining mechanism to allow individual grades, groups and categories of public servants to raise specific issues.