Minister urges union ballot on civil service pay deal
Northern Ireland Minister Barry Gardiner today called on the Civil Service union to ballot its members on its latest pay offer.
He hit back at the Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance (Nipsa) for rejecting the new deal.
He said: “I think it would be very strange indeed for Nipsa representatives to reject this out of hand without going to their members to see what their members thought about it.”
Northern Ireland Office officials are due to meet union leaders today to discuss the new pay deal.
Nipsa general secretary John Corey said the package put forward by the NIO was not good enough.
He added his members would step up the bitter 34-week dispute, which has disrupted MoT tests, benefit payments and farmers’ grants.
Mr Gardiner urged the union to reconsider the offer.
“For many people to be getting a minimum of 3% to a maximum of 7.9% extra in their pay packet at a time when inflation is running at 1.5% would seem a very good deal indeed.”
Yesterday, Mr Gardiner, acting on behalf of Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy and Finance Minister Ian Pearson, offered an increase of 4.65% over 16 months, with all elements of the package backdated to April 1.
But Mr Corey said that the union was not impressed by the offer.
“The truth is that the pay offer made for 2004 only would give members a 0.25% increase in rates of pay,” he said.
“With no increase for pay for 2003, which caused this dispute, the offer would mean that, in three years, Civil Service pay rates would have risen by only a quarter of a per cent.”
