In mid-June the Irish Congress of Trade Unions Public Services Committee voted to accept the ‘Croke Park deal’. ‘Social partnership’, presumed dead and buried when the government unilaterally imposed pay cuts on public sector workers in the December ’09 budget, was revived and given a new lease of life. But this is ‘social partnership’ with a difference. Instead of the union leadership believing that ‘partnership’ gives them some input into government policy (as they have wrongly thought for the past 20 years), all they can now offer in its defence is that this is the “least worst deal” and that “it’s better to be inside the tent than outside.”

The sequence of tables shows the results of the ballots in the Trade Unions on the 'Croke Park Deal' as of the 24 May.  We will be updating these tables as new results become available. The tables show the number of members in each union, what the executive recommended and how the members voted (where this is known).

Brian Mooney used his regular column in the 'Education Today' section of the 'Irish Times  to tell teachers why should vote yes to the public sector agreement.  This is a response to his argument by teacher and WSM member Gregor Kerr submitted as a letter to the irish Times.

The Civil Public and Services Union (CPSU) has voted to reject the Croke Park deal by over 2 to 1.  This is a very significant result as the 13,000 CPSU members are the lowest paid public sector workers in the country, the grades that might have benefited from the supposed role back of the pay cut is savings were delivered.

The result of the CPSU ballot on the Croke Park Draft Agreement was as follows

INTO Vote No

Public Sector Deal - 10 Reasons to Vote No

WSM member Gregor Kerr on why teachers should vote no to the Croke Park Agreement. Speaking at a debate organised by the North Dublin branch of the Irish National Teachers Organisation.

We must reject this deal, which is worse than the status quo. It is so bad that the executives of a number of unions have even gone against their negotiators by recommending rejection of the deal. The union leadership has forgotten how to fight and even those amongst them those who argue for rejecting the deal simply want to get back to the table for further negotiations.

The long days and nights of bargaining between government and union top brass at Croke Park ended when the participants emerged and presented the fruits of their deliberations. It is a pretty awful deal, which rubber stamped the pay cuts already handed out to public sector workers and added a whole layer of new working conditions, essentially extra hours and responsibilities for the same or lower pay. Over the couple of weeks that followed, the various public sector unions in conference or at executive level recommended either accepting or rejecting this deal, with the final call resting with the membership. As we go to print the final result of these ballots are still unknown but recent experience should warn us that, in either case, the battle is far from over.

The CPSU activist group have produced a leaflet calling on members of the CPSU to vote No to the public sector deal.  "Many public sector workers have been shocked and angered that such a deal was agreed in the first place, some general secretaries including our own tried to present the deal as some kind of “victory”. Of course we can now see clearly that this is a rotten deal." 

The INTO Vote No Campaign today launched a new, updated version of the leaflet calling on members of the union to reject the Public Sector deal. This leaflet will be distributed throughout the country at INTO information meetings and in school staffrooms in the coming weeks in advance of the ballot of members which takes place during May (closing date 21st May).