INCOMES POLICY
| IRELAND |
| INCOMES POLICY |
An incomes policy is a strategy to contain pay increases in line with pre-determined criteria, usually related to the needs of macro-economic management. The term is often used to describe government strategy, but it is also possible to have voluntary incomes policies agreed by the social partners. So, for example, the threat by the government to impose statutory limits on pay and price increases in 1969 would, if implemented, have led to a Government-sponsored incomes policy, while the National Wages Agreements which actually followed amounted in practice to voluntary incomes policies.
Where incomes policies have been imposed by Government they have tended not to be very successful. In the mid-1980s the then Coalition Government announced a series of pay norms during each Pay Round ; in one case the norm was to be enforced through the mechanism of restraints on price rises where employers exceeded the norm. The evidence, however, was that the norms were by and large ignored during pay negotiations. Since 1987 there have again been in place, in the form of the Programme for National Recovery and the Programme for Economic and Social Progress , voluntary incomes policies.
Please note: the European industrial relations glossaries were compiled between 1991 and 2003 and are not updated. For current material see the European industrial relations dictionary.