In answer to your point below:-

‘A predatory employer cut pay and threatened to do it again. The unions traded some productivity for a deferral of this but no guarantees - predatory employers faced with a disunited workforce tend not to give guarantees’

The problem surely here is not whether or not this is a good deal - it clearly isn’t. and I know you’re not arguing that it is. The point surely is that as regards negotiating any concessions, this is a complete failure.

The day after the budget last December, two ministers threatened that if there weren’t major concessions on working conditions by the unions, there would be further pay cuts. The farce of the low grade work to rule, the threat of strikes and the talks lasting two weeks have amounted to this: the ‘threat’ has now been converted into the ‘deal’. this is exactly what Mary Hanafin and Dara Colleary offered last December. If its a good deal now, why wasn’t it then?

A offer to freeze pay (and pay cuts) without seeking concessions would have been a poor result but a result nonetheless. This - should it be accepted - is nothing but an abject defeat.

The worst thing about it (one of the many worst things, really) is that if we sign up to it we have accepted the analysis that says we have always been over paid and work shy. Once we accept that, we will be faced with ever increasing assaults on both pay and conditions.

http://notesonthefront.typepad.com/politicaleconomy/2010/03/in-a-previous-post-we-saw-that-public-sector-labour-costs-are-below-average-by-eu-15-standards-the-argument-that-irish-publ.html

The right-wing wants us to believe that it’s just a pay dispute, and that public sector pay cuts are not only necessary but beneficial to the economy in a recession.

http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1019252.shtml

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ireland/7533807/What-Ireland-can-teach-us-about-spending-cuts.html

But that’s just bollocks.

It may not have been a stellar pay deal - but it definitely wasn’t a partnership agreement or any other form of ‘political influence’.

A predatory employer cut pay and threatened to do it again. The unions traded some productivity for a deferral of this but no guarantees - predatory employers faced with a disunited workforce tend not to give guarantees.

If congress wants to publish some political analysis, its probably checking to see if anybody else thinks its a good analysis and has any ideas on how it to get it adopted - I’m pretty sure they would have been laughed out of Croke Park if they tried to table it at the pay talks.