Social Partnership

Social partnership (Irish: Pairtíocht sóisialta) is the term used for the tripartite, triennial national pay agreements reached in Ireland.

The process was initiated in 1987, following a period of high inflation and weak economic growth which led to increased emigration and unsustainable government borrowing and national debt. Strike and wage moderation were important outcomes of the agreements, and this has been seen as a significant contributor to the 'Celtic Tiger' phenomenon. Prior to this, agreement bargaining had been on a local level since 1981; in the previous decade national employer-union deals and 'National Understandings' were the norm, but came under increased pressure.

The corporatist 'social partnership' agreements are agreed between the Government, the main employer groups Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC) and the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) and the trade unions (members of the Irish Congress of Trades Unions); since 1997 voluntary/community organisations have taken part in the general policy discussions but not in the key wage bargaining element. The corporatist core has been a trade-off of modest wage increases in exchange for a lighter income tax burden. There are also sectoral reforms negotiated and public service pay reviews under the rubric of 'benchmarking' with private sector pay scales.

The current agreement, that has been in place since 2005, is Towards 2016 (T2016), the past agreements are:

Sustaining Progress operated from January 2003 to December 2005, setting centralised, national wage increases, and providing for policy agreements over welfare, education, health and employment issues. It was the sixth of the series of neo-corporatist agreements since 1987 with the national wage agreement details negotiated in two separate tranches broadly covering 2003–4 and 2005-6.

Its core participants were: (1) the Government through the Department of the Taoiseach (Prime Minister's Office); (2) the main employers' unions which are the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC) and the Construction Industry Federation (CIF); and (3) the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) which is the umbrella body for over 40 trades unions representing around 550,000 members coming from all over the country. They account for about one-third of the number of employees in the state.

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