How do people feel about this one? Will it be short and sweet?
Mod warning:
https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121425200/#Comment_121425200
Well that's quite the conundrum as Enterprise recently lost a major building and squashed the staff in elsewhere, there is no longer a desk for everyone (so much for the 'great collaboration opportunites' presented by anchor days, blah blah) so hot desking is the order of the day
I reckon it's just a bullshît rumour but with PER you never know.
Yes the brother used to work in Earlsfort but is now in Kildare st I think. He thinks there is a push to have an increased mandatory office attendance
Have also been informed of talks of enforcing more in-office days, different dept. A sibling in another dept again also heard same.
Couldn't disagree more. Retiring on CNER effects your whole retirement calculation, including the purchase element. You're not penalised twice. AVC's are far more vulnerable to market fluctuation and should never be puched as anything different.
I think the majority would be against this and prefer to keep the maximum amount of wfh and forgo the increased pay. Going in more days will eat any pay increase anyway so it would be doubly bad.
The push for a return to the office is not because of productivity it's because of lobbying at senior level, office space costs money and is often left ideal, contract were being cut and now the sec gens have lobbyists in their ear.
That's why the union is sending signals back, there'll be a fight on our hands and I for one will be walking to the welfare office instead of doing a 3 hour each way commute 5 days a week.
the idea of the housing for all etc. that is mentioned in that article is nice but in the end most people will take pay rises over housing for all as a choice so not sure why the unions are so hellbent on pushing this.
There is insufficient office space in many places now though so it wont work, you have probably 3 or 4 people to every hot desk in our place and no plans for more space.
Probably saying return to the office, so union says no and that's a win, not too hopeful for anything close to inflation in the next deal.
forgo the increased pay
I'd vote against that. It would have to be under local bargaining.
If people want to salary sacrifice for WFH, sure (it'd be a bit weird) but I'm pretty much required to be most days irrespective of any agreement. An unworkable solution imo across the board. I'm not even sure how it could be done
It been shown in the private sector in scenarios where it has been tested (Dell for example) that the majority are willing to forgo pay increases and promotions etc to keep majority wfh I doubt it's any different in the public sector.
I am not saying on an individual level people would sacrifice salary for WFH I am saying people would refuse the the entire new deal and continue as is until a solution of pay increases without any agreement on increased in office presence being tied into it. I took a fairly heafty pay cut to change jobs last year and forced return to office in my previous job was one of the main reasons for moving. WFH is worth a lot more to a lot of people than a few % extra pay.
No office return stipulations should be entertained by the unions in these negotiations.
I'll always take guaranteed pay rises over government promises on housing.
I have no doubt that there is lots of data to show that people in the private sector will forgo pay increases in order to keep WFH. I don't dispute that. A company like Dell can manage that because it’s typically negotiated on an individual or departmental level where the expectations across team members are broadly similar.
This is a Public Sector Pay Deal covering an incredibly diverse workforce, from civil servants in office roles to teachers in schools and council workers in vans all day. The reality is that WFH is completely meaningless to a huge portion of the membership.
If the unions were to reject or compromise on a general pay increase just to maintain WFH conditions for the subset of staff who are eligible for it, I would absolutely vote against it. Those of us who have to be on-site shouldn't be expected to forgo a percentage pay increase to protect a flexibility benefit we can't actually access. For that reason, I think it would have to be dealt with under Local Bargaining where the 2% allocation is structured in some way to maintain the WFH schedules for the grades that warrant it.
nobody in a local authority has heard anything yet?
What increased pay, though?
Remember that a pay rise in line with inflation is not a pay increase, it's just compensating for the diminished value of money.
The last two deals didn't even manage to do that.
It's entirely unreasonable and unfair to expect employees who have been working away fine under blended working for years to now face significantly worsened T&Cs because… well, nobody has ever come up with a good reason.
And then to have some telling us to either suck it up or take a pay cut! It's maddening.
This is just a sneaky way of penalising employees on age/family grounds as wfh has more value for them. A totally scummy way for any employer to behave
Totally agree
Even if those promises were to come true, it'd still be a stupid trade-off.
It's not as if public servants are going to be privileged in future on social housing lists (could you even imagine how that would go down!) so why should they have to make a sacrifice while other workers do not?
This is why we have taxes which we pay in proportion to our income. It's actually a system which works pretty well…
Housing is needed for our society to function. It's not something that is optional or can be traded off against something else as part of a deal.
We're spending billions a year on HAP etc. and the only real effect of this is to put money into the pockets of private landlords, the State will never own these properties it is paying heavily for
RTE news: No talks on public sector pay as deal expires
https://www.rte.ie/news/2026/0701/1581174-public-sector-pay-deal/
Jack Chambers article in the Irish Times
"The Government is clear: .." Emdashes everywhere towards the end.
that article was at least partially written by AI. I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt and say that the first few paragraphs might be genuine, but towards the end especially it reeks of AI.
I can't see a single em dash, just normal hyphens
In my experience people vote for more money no matter how pathetic the increase is and regardless of the quid pro quo’s. Then give out about the brainless work practices afterward.
Hyphens connect words, em dashes separate clauses. They are em dashes
I use em dashes a lot when I write TBF so you can't always put that down to AI!
Sounds like a long wait before any talks nevermind any prospect of increases being implemented - Jan 27 maybe before it's in a paycheck at best imo
An em dash is a printing term, a dash the width of an m in moveable type. Those aren't em dashs.
The reason they're a massive AI sign is that they aren't on normal keyboards and need to be entered as a character code.
A union should never negotiate for reduced T&C's. Once they're gone, they never come back. Pay is far easier to influence over the medium term.
My money is on later than that, I'd say Jan 28. I think they'll wanna spread it closer to an election.
There is a meeting of ICTU Public Sector Committee tomorrow, presumably to discuss the outstanding 1% and the next pay agreement.
My money is September/October with the promise of backdating to make the deal seem slightly sweeter than it is.
The concept that Government would or could use WFH as a negotiable for PS or CS workers is so bizarre, I cannot believe they would consider it, but looking at them, can see it being mentioned as an excuse for not giving reasonable increases in pay.
If they cut WFH, won't affect me but around Dublin, the increase in traffic would be so unpalatable that there would be no appetite for it considering the first slow news day, RTE will have it up to point out that 90minute commute is now 8 minutes longer, parking is harder to find, less seats on public transport and so on, is being contributed to for no reason by government.
Also, near impossible to implement, the unions would probably accept it for more money, knowing it is completely unenforceable for many departments.
Not everyone can wfh in there job what benefit will it be to them.
There far to busy with being up the holes off all the European heads to bother with the talks.
Its the same for almost all of the Union "perks" - particularily those pushing Cornmarket. I go to Cornmarket for house/car insurance prices every year, they are well beaten every year elsewhere. There were a few years there where they were very hard to get on the phone as well. Back several years ago and I cannot remember the details there was a salary protection scheme ran via one of the Unions - it was good value but had to leave that Union and join another and lost the benefit of it. I don't believe its still available.
I have gotten financial health checks from Cornmarket in the past and have general found them OK, once you do a bit of research yourself prior to committing to anything.
AVC's and financial advise in general should be gotten from as independent a person as possible who isn't out to make commission on a specific product.
