Civil Service Pay Cuts

[Tony Baloney]

36 grand a year!!! Holy f**k!

I know a lot of people who work 40 hours a week who dont earn that much. Its a very unfair system that allows an unemployed person and his family to earn that much.

Aye, I pay 5K 

5K wouldnt keep you in bargain buckets 

I think Hardstation was referring to the fact that your other half pays 36 grand a year in tax.

[muppet]

36 grand a year!!! Holy f**k!

I know a lot of people who work 40 hours a week who dont earn that much. Its a very unfair system that allows an unemployed person and his family to earn that much.

Aye, I pay 5K 

5K wouldnt keep you in bargain buckets 

I think Hardstation was referring to the fact that your other half pays 36 grand a year in tax.

Be gentle, his teacher wasn't very good.

[armaghniac]

Looking back we can see that our biggest problems come back to that muppet who was in charge for 10 yrs, his style of negotiation (which was to give everybody what they asked for) has left us with huge public expenditure that is unsustainable in the short term never mind the longer term.  It's sickening really that the real gains made in the early part of his tenure (no thanks to him) were pissed up against the wall in the form of houses that will need to be demolished, jeeps that are already rusting and tv's that aren't even Full HD, hows that for long term thinking?

Well said Bogball. The point is that within the public service broadly defined, some bolshie unions asked for the outrageous and got it while others were reasonable and didn't always get it. So work practices and wages and so on may be middling in one place but ridiculous in other dept. The likes of the ESB have some of the worst examples. There is a real danger that with the urgency of the situation that the cuts now will fall on the more flexible parts of the public service, which needed cutting least, while those cavemen who shout loudest will be spared, yet again.

The unions painted the grim picture of deflation the other day, but is deflation really such a bad thing for a small open economy like ours?  I haven't put much thought into this (as you can probably tell), but I don't think so, as I said before, anything that helps us regain competitiveness can't be a bad thing, whilst we don't want the western world in general to go into deflation, for us it might be good??

In an earlier post, Bogball you welcomed mortgage interest rate cuts. Deflation which is certainly underway, is not so bad if you have money in the bank, prices fall, your wages fall, your savings increase. But if you have a big mortgage your wages fall, but the mortgage still has a real interest rate and you end up in negative equity. The government too is borrowing money, although their ability to repay would fall every year.

[Double Cross]

I think Hardstation was referring to the fact that your other half pays 36 grand a year in tax.

Sadly anyone on a decent wage in the 26 counties falls into the 40% tax bracket, while dole scroungers get 36K a year tax free.

[Bogball XV]

The unions painted the grim picture of deflation the other day, but is deflation really such a bad thing for a small open economy like ours?  I haven't put much thought into this (as you can probably tell), but I don't think so, as I said before, anything that helps us regain competitiveness can't be a bad thing, whilst we don't want the western world in general to go into deflation, for us it might be good??

In an earlier post, Bogball you welcomed mortgage interest rate cuts. Deflation which is certainly underway, is not so bad if you have money in the bank, prices fall, your wages fall, your savings increase. But if you have a big mortgage your wages fall, but the mortgage still has a real interest rate and you end up in negative equity. The government too is borrowing money, although their ability to repay would fall every year.

I know what you're saying re people with mortgages etc and negative equity, but, no matter what else happens here, I can't see any upside for those people for a long time to come.  No matter what way we look at it, people are going to be trapped in properties that are no longer suitable to their needs, imo that's simply because banks will not lend anywhere near as much to individuals for a long, long time to come.  A lot of credit has been taken from the worldwide system, that credit will probably not be allowed re-enter the system (bar in the form of govt bonds, which are rampant) for the forseeable future, thus it won't be possible for people to avoid negative equity.  Basically, as I see it, we, the irish taxpayers will be paying for this for years to come.  This negative equity is owed to irish banks, when it's not capable of being repayed (and in the absence of some govt scheme to help homeowners) we will have to make this good, this can be in the form of higher charges, lower tax take from the banks, bailouts, whatever, but either way we will have to pay.
Good point re the govt borrowing though, deflation will indeed make it more difficult to pay, all the more reason to get those turbines up and running in the atlantic and start exporting some of that electricity!!  Maybe though, we'll come to see that anglo saxon ideas on leverage, gearing and credit expansion aren't really the way forward?

[Billys Boots]

When public sector works complained that IT/electronics workers were better paid than them during the 'Celtic Tiger' times, they got 'benchmarking' (non-productivity related increases/bonuses).

When private sector workers complain about public sector workers not doing their share in a recession, they get told to f**k off. 

I really, really, really must remember this when the next election comes around.  There's going to be a big 'spin-filter' in my house.  Anyone remember saying that FF were the only ones with the experience to get us through an economic crisis, anyone, anyone???

[jaykay]

At least one journalist isn't following the flock.

http://www.tribune.ie/news/article/2009/jan/11/diarmuid-doyle-public-sector-workers-have-nothing-/

From time to time, managers of sporting teams like to pin hostile media criticism of their players onto the dressing room wall in advance of an important game. The thinking is that the players will see themselves described in print as nancy boys/unfit to wear the jersey/worse than a team of malaria-stricken grandmothers, and react by ripping their opponents to shreds in the subsequent match. It's an interesting psychological approach and works as often as not. People don't like their commitment or existence questioned and will stand up for themselves when it is.




If Ireland's public-service workers, who have recently been blamed for just about every catastrophe bar the war in Gaza, want to acquire fire in their bellies as their union representatives meet the government over the state of the economy, they might adopt a similar approach. They could start by listening back to some interviews that were done late in the week on RTé and Today FM with the likes of Turlough O'Sullivan, head of the employers' group Ibec, and Ed Walsh, the founding president of the University of Limerick.




Like all employers' representatives, O'Sullivan likes nothing better than a good kick at the public service. He was in flying form on Thursday on The Last Word, advocating public-sector redundancies in the order of 20% and using words like 'bloated' and 'overstaffed' to describe the civil service. To an extent, this was just the usual employer posturing in advance of talks, and public-sector workers will have heard it all before. To get the real dressing-room-wall experience, therefore, they should tune into two interviews done in quick succession by Walsh with Mary Wilson and Matt Cooper on Thursday.




Walsh was invited on by both presenters to talk about the 1,900 redundancies at Dell but wasted no time in getting stuck into the public sector, which he appears to blame for all the country's woes. Walsh is a balanced commentator only to the extent that he appears to have chips on both shoulders. On his right, he carries a visceral hostility to the public service in general; on his left, he displays huge animus towards teachers in particular. Statistics poured out of him on both programmes. Our teachers were paid in excess of 37% more than teachers in Britain. Ambulance drivers were paid more than a junior consultant in Finland. (I have no idea whether that's true or not, although I'm pretty sure that junior doctors in Helsinki don't risk being attacked by thugs every time they're on a job.) Our kids are the 22nd worst at maths out of 28 countries, apparently.




What this had to do with the closure of Dell wasn't entirely clear, but it was all good knockabout fun. As Walsh became ever more apoplectic, I must confess that I laughed out loud. Although he was supposed to be commenting on Dell, he might just as easily have been talking about the public finances, around which a consensus seems to have settled: the public sector is an insatiable beast, populated by overpaid and underperforming workers of whom there are far too many. Get rid of a fifth of them, slash the salaries of the rest and the Celtic Tiger will undergo a miraculous recovery.




Teachers, guards, nurses, doctors, social workers and the rest, who have had no part to play in the collapse of the economy, will be bemused at the hostility shown to them and their colleagues. But they should hold tough and, having given all due consideration to the nonsense spouted by Walsh, Enda Kenny and various rent-a-quote economists, fight their corner.




Public-service workers have plenty of ammunition to work with. Ireland has the third-smallest public expenditure as a percentage of GDP in the OECD. The Irish public sector is by far the smallest of the old EU states. In 1988, public-service workers made up 24.7% of all those in employment. Last year, it was 17.2%. This is significantly less than the level of public employment in Norway (28%), Sweden (27%) and France (23%). The starting salary of a clerical officer is €23,221, rising to €35,727 after 12 years of service. This latter figure is less than the average industrial wage in the private sector. A staff nurse takes six years to get to the average industrial wage.




Public-sector workers have nothing to feel guilty about as they consider how to play their part in fixing a mess not of their making. Because it's the right thing to do, they should promise efficiencies, they should offer more flexibility in work practices and they should certainly, in the national interest, agree to scrap the pay deal and forego any salary increases for the forseeable future. But they should resist any talk of pay cuts, and refuse to be scape­goated for our current travails. It's up to the people who got us into this mess to get us out.

[Billys Boots]

Quoting Diarmuid Doyle is equivalent to having Kevin Myers on your side.   

Public-service workers have plenty of ammunition to work with. Ireland has the third-smallest public expenditure as a percentage of GDP in the OECD. The Irish public sector is by far the smallest of the old EU states. In 1988, public-service workers made up 24.7% of all those in employment. Last year, it was 17.2%. This is significantly less than the level of public employment in Norway (28%), Sweden (27%) and France (23%). The starting salary of a clerical officer is €23,221, rising to €35,727 after 12 years of service. This latter figure is less than the average industrial wage in the private sector. A staff nurse takes six years to get to the average industrial wage.

The mean income tax rate in Ireland is 26%, the mean income tax rates in Norway, Sweden and France are 37%, 48% and 50% respectively.  They mustn't have taught poor our Diarmuid sums, while he was learning his bluster/propaganda.

[Bogball XV]

Teachers, guards, nurses, doctors, social workers and the rest, who have had no part to play in the collapse of the economy, will be bemused at the hostility shown to them and their colleagues. But they should hold tough and, having given all due consideration to the nonsense spouted by Walsh, Enda Kenny and various rent-a-quote economists, fight their corner.

They had as much a part to play in the collapse of the economy as anyone else and to say otherwise is nonsense, they contributed as much and in many cases more to the property bubble through the multitude of buy-to-lets owned by members of said professions.  When their unions could have been arguing for improving conditions and facilities they were happy to accept the short term gift of a few quid extra.

Public-service workers have plenty of ammunition to work with. Ireland has the third-smallest public expenditure as a percentage of GDP in the OECD. The Irish public sector is by far the smallest of the old EU states. In 1988, public-service workers made up 24.7% of all those in employment. Last year, it was 17.2%. This is significantly less than the level of public employment in Norway (28%), Sweden (27%) and France (23%). The starting salary of a clerical officer is €23,221, rising to €35,727 after 12 years of service. This latter figure is less than the average industrial wage in the private sector. A staff nurse takes six years to get to the average industrial wage.

Two quick points here, firstly GDP is the wrong measure by which to assess anything in the irish economy, GDP includes the production by multinationals etc which inflates the figure artificially, other countries GDP's are deflated artificially for the same reason.  In Ireland GDP is reckoned to be roughly 25% higher than GNP, but GNP is the more relevant figure.
Secondly, our problem is not with the overall public sector expenditure, we know our services are shite, we know the facilities that our medical and educational professionals have to work in are sub-standard, the problem is that virtually all additional spending over the past 10yrs has been in the form of wages.  The journo here is just spinning, no better than the likes of O'Connor of IBEC and Ed Walsh (why anyone would want to axe 20% of public sector jobs is beyond me, what about the reduction in the multiplier effect, the additional burden on social welfare ).  Why doesn't the journalist provide a comparison of salaries of the various professions amongst the countries mentioned?

[Bogball XV]

Quoting Diarmuid Doyle is equivalent to having Kevin Myers on your side.   

Didn't know it was Doyle, but had a feeling, at least it makes a change from spouting more vitriol about the gaa.

[Donagh]

The vast majority of civil servants are as hard working as the rest of us, it is a small minority that have got them a bad name. Don't forget these people pay tax too. If there are to be pay cuts, why not cut the "pay" of those who contribute least to our society, those on the dole. The dole in the 26 counties is a joke. €207 a week for a single person, plus up to €560 a month in rent allowance. Family allowance is also another nice earner for lazy layabouts who do nothing all day but watch Tricia, smoke Lambert and Butler and breed like rats. I know one man who has been on the dole for 19 years. He is claiming for himself, the wife and 5 kids, thats €460 a week. He gets his mortgage paid which is just under €500 a month (yes a man who is on the dole for 19 years has a mortgage) and then they have family allowance of roughly €800 a month. Thats over €3000 a month for doing absolutely nothing, tax free. Should we really cut the pay of those who get out of their bed 5 mornings a week, or should we target those who contribute nothing to society, but take the most?

So should we take it from this that you disapprove of large families and expect us all to be wage slaves like your good wife and yourself? So who's going to pay for your pension?

[Mayo4Sam]

  We're lucky to even get pay rise in line with inflation, we don't get performance related pay, all the shit about sick absences has been knocked on the head.

Gs Man i think a lot of private sector would think you're lucky that u dont get performance related pay rises!

As for sick absences 

Workers in public sector take more sick days

Tuesday December 30 2008

ALMOST all major public sector employers have higher absenteeism rates than the private sector, an Irish Independent investigation has found.

Of 60 public sector bodies surveyed -- including ministerial departments, county and city councils, the HSE, Fas and RTE -- 47 have higher absenteeism rates than the national average for the private sector.

The average private sector firm loses 3.5pc of its working year to certified and uncertified sick leave.

The absenteeism rate refers to the proportion of days lost as a percentage of the total number of days available to work in a year.

The rate in the Department of Social and Family Affairs -- the department responsible for getting people back to work -- is more than double the average in the private sector and is among the worst in the major sectors of the public service.

Apart from the Irish Prison Service, support staff within the HSE are the worst offenders among State employees.

The porters, carers, cleaners and caterers within the health service lost 8pc of their working year to sick leave.

Variations

But there were significant variations within the health service, with medical and dental staff recording an absenteeism rate of 0.93pc, nursing staff recording 5.69pc and "other patient and client care" recording a rate of 7pc.
Earlier this month, the HSE's human resources director Sean McGrath warned that there was no alternative but to change work practices and reduce absenteeism, to help slash hundreds of millions in pay costs.

The Irish Independent investigation came in the wake of news that the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) had launched an investigation into civil service absenteeism due to concerns that some civil servants are "swinging the lead" or "taking duvet days".

Of the 34 county and city councils across the country, 28 have absenteeism rates of more than 3.5pc.

A handful of public sector organisations -- including RTE and Failte Ireland -- have significantly lower rates than the private sector. Galway County Council, Clare County Council and Wicklow County Council also have lower absenteeism rates, as has the Courts Service of Ireland.

Cavan County Council, Meath County Council, Westmeath County Council and the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs were all on a par with the private sector average of 3.5pc.

The Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources could not provide an annual absenteeism rate as it was only established following the formation of the current Government in June 2007.

Other public sector bodies surveyed, including gardai, teachers, FAS, the Revenue Commissioners and the Central Statistics Office (CSO) -- all had higher rates.

- Fiach Kelly


Double Cross, not everyone is like your example there, I've been on the dole since november and get the bare minimum. Thankfully i'm off it from next week 

[jaykay]

"The starting salary of a clerical officer is €23,221, rising to €35,727 after 12 years of service. This latter figure is less than the average industrial wage in the private sector."

Funny how none of ye picked up on this point 

[Bogball XV]

"The starting salary of a clerical officer is €23,221, rising to €35,727 after 12 years of service. This latter figure is less than the average industrial wage in the private sector."

Funny how none of ye picked up on this point 

It is high alright, but I'd be happy enough for clerical officers to escape with a 1% or 2% cut, single digit anyway.

[Hardy]

I don't think there'll be pay cuts at the lower levels. This has been signalled already, as well as ruling out cuts for teachers, nurses and plod. Not many left to cut after that, though.