Survey finds strong support for pay moderation and social partnership

With the social partners engaged in negotiations on a successor to Ireland's three-year national programme, Partnership 2000, a survey of industrial relations practitioners conducted in November 1999 has identified pay moderation as the single most important feature of such agreements.

A survey of personnel managers and trade union officials has found that pay moderation is seen as the most important feature of Ireland's recent series of national agreements. Talks on a new agreement to replace the current Partnership 2000 (P2000- IE9702103F) got underway in November 1999 (IE9911146F). and are expected to conclude in February 2000.

The survey was carried out jointly in November, 1999 by the Irish Productivity Centre (IPC) - an independent state-funded body - and the weekly magazine, Industrial Relations News (IRN). It finds that managers and trade union representatives share a common view of the achievements of P2000. Both identified pay moderation as its single most significant achievement, with industrial relations stability considered the next most significant feature. Tax reform and the forging of constructive trade union-employer relations were ranked third and fourth respectively, while social reform was considered the least important achievement of P2000.

A majority of management respondents were from Irish-owned organisations (59%) with the remainder coming from organisations in US, continental European and UK ownership. Most (70%) were in the private sector and the organisations were evenly balanced between manufacturing and services. A majority had been in existence for more than 15 years (80%) and employed in excess of 150 people (76%). Of the trade union respondents, the majority (70%) were from general unions with the rest evenly divided between craft and public service unions.

Other findings of the survey included the following:

• despite identifying pay moderation as its most significant achievement, 42% of management respondents reported that pay increases outside the terms of P2000 had been agreed in their organisations. The level of additional increases ranged from 1% to 11%;

• a large majority of those responding (71%) considered that the continuation of pay bargaining and partnership at national level was important to the success and competitiveness of the organisation in which they operated. A successor agreement to P2000 was favoured by 92%;

• a sizeable majority would favour some form of local bargaining discretion in addition to centrally agreed pay increases in a new agreement, with 57% favouring limited local discretion and 23% favouring unlimited local discretion.

• as with national partnership, most managers (69%) and union representatives (62%) considered that partnership at local level was important to the success and competitiveness of companies;

• there was limited support for "pay innovation" among managers, with the exceptions being performance-related pay and employee share-ownership. Nonetheless, a significant minority (between 20% to 32%) either operate or are "considering" developments such as skill-based pay, annualised hours and team or competence-based pay systems; and

• responses from union representatives reflected a preference for employee share purchase/ownership schemes and profit-sharing, with 72% identifying these as appropriate methods of rewarding employees