Croke Park games

Another very welcome guest post from Joe.

The Croke Park dance involving the government, public sector management and public sector unions continues apace. It’s a dance on so many levels. The unions are playing a very cute game. All the dancers are. For the unions, the trick is to give enough “flexibility” etc to enable the Agreement’s proponents (i.e. Govt, management and unions) to be able to argue that the Agreement is working. But only to give as little as possible – enough to ensure that the Agreement stays in place and that the government doesn’t cut their members’ wages again.

In that context, Minister Brian Hayes’ recent speech in the Seanad is a reassurance [to access PDF click Address for Minister Hayes for Seanad Debate on Croke Park Agreement]. Hayes points out that the government met its financial targets in 2011 – the troika are happy with us. He points out that the public sector paybill will be cut by 20% by 2015 – no small achievement. He comes across as very content and confident on the bigger picture re the country’s economic plight.

And the unions are good at getting the bigger picture. What is the government’s strategy here? Not just on Croke Park, but on everything? It is to put Ireland up there as the best boys in the crisis class. To promote the idea that Ireland is stable – look, no strikes; look – no petrol bombs; Ireland is not Greece. And the government is in the happy position of knowing that this is what the European financial powers want too – they want to be able to point to Ireland and say: Look, it can be done – Look at Ireland, the best boys in the class are doing what we want and it’s working.

Meanwhile the government is working quietly away at cutting a deal on the Anglo promissory notes. And they will get some kind of deal – because financial Europe needs a success. And we are it. And when they get that deal, the country’s overall financial position is greatly improved. And the unions know that the pressure for more “flexibility” under Croke Park is lessened again.
And realistically, the savings being made under Croke Park are there anyway: numbers employed in the public sector are being cut and budgets to deliver service are being cut substantially too.

So the dance continues. The Sindo and Ireland’s top 369 economists and their fellow-travellers will continue to jump up and down and bleat on about public servants in cushy numbers. Government, public sector management and public sector unions will continue to push to and fro on reforms and flexibilities. Battles on rosters for nurses and outsourcing (privatisation) and all the rest will be fought and won and fought and lost or fought and drawn.

But overall, you’d have to say that all the dancers will be happy enough with the way things are panning out. For the government, we are the best boys in the crisis class and we might be out of the class by the end of next year. For the public sector management and unions, we’re all still in jobs, our wages haven’t been cut much further and we’ve forced through some changes which we couldn’t have gotten in the olden days.

Enda will be a very self-satisfied man at the FG Ard Fheis at the end of March.