Conference Report 2016

Section 1: Pay and Allowances
WRC and the Labour Court and advises that the
appropriate primary legislation be enacted.
6.27 It is now an affront to any group of workers that
such a basic entitlement is denied. This demand is
discrete from those pertaining to trade union status,
the right to strike or any other consideration to the
Association’s membership’s welfare. The denial to
employees of the State’s all-important security
services of such a basic entitlement is no longer
acceptable.
6.28 There has traditionally been a reluctance to have
Garda bodies engage in the same fora as trade
unions. However, for the first time in its history, the
GRA was recently granted (apparently on a once-off
basis), to be involved directly in negotiations on
members’ pay and conditions of employment. This
welcome precedent proved to be a beneficial
development and to be in the best interests of all
parties to the process.
6.29 The relevance of appropriate fora or independence
of the treatment of such matters also recently
featured under the HRA, wherein one of the key
inducing planks for gardaí was the commitment to
this Review process. However, the Department of
Justice’s endeavours to impose the wholly
inappropriate Garda Síochána Inspectorate as
opposed to an independent chairperson of the
Review came close to sundering the complete
sectoral agreement.
6.30 It is common practice to look to our counterparts in
Great Britain and Northern Ireland when addressing
issues, including police pay. Notably these
counterparts are entitled to directly negotiate their
pay and conditions of service with their employers
in the Home Office, via the Joint Police Negotiating
Board (PNB). Prior to 1919 each police force
determined pay for police officers on a local basis. In
1919 a police strike forced the government of the
day to ban strikes, but in so doing they were also
forced to find a way to determine pay and
conditions that would be acceptable to the police
and the public. Hence, from 1919 to 1980 a Whitley
Council approach was adopted.
6.31 The Whitley or Police Council approach operated for
over 50 years with a number of discrete
independent reviews complementing the Council’s
operations. Following the Police Federation’s
withdrawal from the Council (alongside a dispute
over police pay in 1976-77) an Inquiry into the
industrial relations or police negotiating machinery
was established in 1978.
6.32 This recommended the establishment of the PNB in
its present form, with a chairperson and deputy
independent from both sides. The role of the chair
was to “provide continuity and to supply a neutral
voice in negotiation”. An independent secretariat
was also introduced to provide knowledge and
expertise. Specifically addressing the relationship
between the machinery of negotiation and the
absence of the right to strike this (Edmund-Davies)
Inquiry pointed out that:
“Such an important limitation on the freedom of
action of members of the police force renders it
even more essential that the machinery for
determining police pay and other conditions of
service commands the confidence of all sections of
the service.”
6.33 The Police Negotiating Board Act 1980 formally
established the PNB, and was subsequently
consolidated via the Police Act 1996. At the heart of
the Inquiry was the proposed indexing of police
officers’ pay to movements in the Average Earnings
Index for the whole economy.
6.34 In 1993 a further significant development arose
when the Sheehy Inquiry (into Police
Responsibilities and Rewards) recommended a link
to pay settlements rather than average earnings.
Subsequently, the median of total pay settlements
was used to determine the annual police pay rise.
6.35 In 2007-8 there was an unusually vocal and
demonstrative response by the Police Federation of
England and Wales (PFEW) to the decision by the
then Home Secretary to phase in the recommended
pay increases. An estimated 22,500 police officers
marched in central London in protest in an era of
considerable friction between Government and the
PFEW. In August 2008 the Federation was obliged to
call on its 140,000 members to adopt a de facto
‘work-to-rule’ after talks broke down in a bitter pay
row, in response to the Government’s argument
that the automatic indexed pay award system
removed incentives for workplace reform.
6.36 In an attempt to address the issue of police pay
determination in 2010 the government
commissioned the Winsor Report. This endorsed the
operation of an independent Police Pay Review
Body to replace the PNB According to Winsor’s
assessment, the experience from other parts of the
British public sector had shown that a pay review
body is capable of respecting the unique status of
certain employee groups in a society that denies
them a right to strike (such as the Armed Forces’
Pay Review Body).
38th Annual Delegate Conference
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