Irish Social Partnership

Examine recent evolution & developments in Irish employment policy in the context of Social Partnership. Examine it's interaction with the European Employment Strategy with reference as appropriate to selected theoretical models.

The primary objective of this assignment is to examine the evolution of Irish employment policy since 1987. The principal vehicle for examination of policy in Ireland will be the Partnership accords that have been a feature of the political landscape in one guise or another since then. A secondary objective will be to examine Ireland's interaction at the supranational level in the EU, where the key development under consideration will be the European Employment Strategy (EES), which is governed under a system known as the Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC). The key priority for the assignment is as follows:

ÑŸ To illustrate the essentially (competitive) corporatist nature of policy evolution and development in Ireland through the partnership process and to illustrate how employment policy considerations have formed and continue to form the "core" or "hub" of these accords.

Since circa 1993, and with completion of the project to establish the Single Market, policy-makers in the EU have increasingly focused

on (un)employment issues. Developments have centred increasingly on the EES since 1997. The contention considered in is how the "Open Method of Co-Ordination" as utilised in the EES can be viewed as a bridging of the gap between purely Intergovernmental or Supranational models of understanding governance in the EU.

ÑŸ To look at the interaction between Irish and European developments through assessment of the EU's impact (if any) on Irish employment policy since the introduction of the EES.

According to Stone (1989:281) a precursor to policy agenda setting is identification of any given "difficult situation" as a "problem". In this respect there is a commonality of policy context, with particular regard to the economic backdrop, which characterised initiatives, nuances in direction and subsequent developments in both Irish and European employment policy in the recent past . In retrospect, identification of the "problem" for the EU was less of an issue than formulating truly coordinated responses to the problem. Unemployment in the in European OECD countries had from 1983 persistently exceeded the OECD average by around two percentage points (Lundqvist & Sargent 1998:514) and in 1994 the unemployment rate for the EU 15 stood at 10.5% compared with 6.1% in the United States. (Eurostat). For Ireland in the "pre partnership era", unemployment was both a problem in itself as well as a symptom of greater ails. By the mid 1980's a sense of economic crisis prevailed, the obvious indicators being the aforementioned high rates of unemployment, the resumption of heavy emigration, falling living standards and intransigent public finance imbalances (Kennedy et al 1988:92). By 1987 an economic nadir had been reached. The unemployment rate was 17.5 percent, far higher than the European average of 10.0 percent.(Tille and Yi 2001: 2). This equated to over 227,000 persons almost two-thirds of whom were classified as long-term unemployed. (Hardiman 2002)

Turning the economic corner in Ireland: The Programme for National Recovery

The Programme for National Recovery (PNR) was the first of a series of (to now) 6 national agreements between 1987 and 2005. It was established firmly in the context of a tripartite plan to revive an economy peering into the abyss. The suggestion of a national plan to address the issues of jobs, tax reform, social welfare and public finances came initially from the general unions whose members had been more adversely affected by the ongoing recession. The two major issues-unemployment and the imbalances in the public finances had a common origin, namely the dismal rate of growth in the economy: "In the period 1980-1985 the level of GNP registered negligible growth" (NESC 1986). Bill Attley, of the Federated Workers Union of Ireland, seeking an alternative approach, highlighted Austria, Norway and Sweden as potential corporatist role models and a willingness to cooperate with the Government on that basis. (Mansergh:2000) The return to power of Fianna Fail in March 1987 seen the introduction of a Budget that endorsed the principles of the NESC Report (No.83 of November 1986). It was a strategy that involved considerable scaling back in public expenditure as a means to the end of reining in the imbalances in the public finances and did appear to be a melting pot conducive to a return to centralised bargaining. But there was a determination on the part of both Government and the unions and by September 1987, the "third leg" of a prospective "corporatist stool", the private sector employers, who sensed the possibility of a moderate three year pay agreement, joined the talks indicating their support for the Government's efforts to revive the economy.

When compared to what had gone before and what was to come in the future as Partnership became a wider concept, the PNR was a relatively modest and concise document the crux of which was the Government offer of a package of wage moderation in return for income tax relief, very much in the style of the corporatist quid pro quo as referred to in the literature on corporatism. Centrally negotiated pay agreements had a not altogether auspicious precedent in Ireland's 'policy repertoire,(Hardiman:2002) with unions failing in their objective of protecting the living standards of their members and employers not achieving the requisite degree of industrial harmony and strategic certainty. However the PNR was to succeed where the "notional" rather than "national" agreements of the 70's and early 80's had failed. Gross National Product increased by 3.6% in that period and through a combination of small nominal wage increases, low inflation and tax reductions, declines in take home pay were turned around leading to higher real disposable wages. (NESC 1993:46) Non adherence to terms of previous agreements had led to record numbers of strikes but this pattern was seen to decline during the years of the PNR (88-90) and this gave employers the much sought industrial peace and stability they required.

From Small Acorns.... The Growth to pre-eminence of Partnership in Ireland.

After this encouraging start, Social Partnership became the "backbone" of Irish economic policy, with a new agreement being approved every three years. (Baccaro 2003: 688) Each new agreement is was preceded by a NESC Strategy