Civil Service Pay Cuts

[The Watcher Pat]

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?

Thats ridiculous money that..

[comethekingdom]

The nordies posting here should jump back down from their high horses, the initial question was not directed towards them at all.  My understanding is that there is a world of difference between conditions, practices and salary from north to south.
Salaries are much, much higher, it's virtually impossible to sack people down here and most ridiculously of all, civil servants here have their pensions linked to the current salary of the person now doing their job!!!  Now, that's nonsense imo, an inflationary increase would suffice.
I've worked in both sectors (never actually been employed by the state though) and yes, there are plenty of useless beings in both, the problem however is that in the private sector management won't allow this to continue indefinitely, whilst in the public sector it may well do.  Another problem I frequently encountered in the public sector was misallocation of resources, this was endemic imo, I encountered many, many good individuals who had feck all to do.
Regarding the salary reduction, I'm totally in favour, it needs to be worked properly though, you can't have people at lower grades ending up being paid more than their superiors (simply because this would not be accepted by workers).  I'd like to see something like 20% cuts at the very top, 15% for the 100Kers, 10% for the 75Ker, 7/8% for the 50+Kers and cuts for those below 50K being such that they remain being paid less than those above them in the pay scales.  
We need pay cuts for the public sector because we need to reduce wages country wide if we are ever to see FDI in the country again, I'm not saying that FDI is the be all and end all, but it does have a part to play.  In short we need to become competitive, this is an important step towards this.

Well said.
Look at all the jobs under threat - KOSTAL in Abbeyfeale & Mallow could be down the tubes tommorow. I'm sure these people would rather take a pay cut and have a job than have nothing at all. The notion of public and civil service sector workers going on strike 'cos of pay cuts will not get much sympathy from normal members of the public let me tell ye!

[Double Cross]

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?

Thats ridiculous money that..

My other half pays about €3k a month in tax, nice to know where it goes  Instead of targetting those in employment, the government should target the long term unemployed. How can anyone be unemployed for 19 years?

[Rossfan]

most ridiculously of all, civil servants here have their pensions linked to the current salary of the person now doing their job!!!  

Word for word from that IBECunt on the radio this morning.
As I understand it public pensioners get the same percentage increases as public sector workers get......that was the way when there were pay increases.
Isnt it great all the same the way the IBECunts having fcuked up the economy now have only one agenda -- to screw the working people and one way to make sure you keep them screwed is to kill off any higher perks/standards that public workers have so they can continue the race to the bottom.
And now we have the BuilderFF Government nationalising the greatest shower of all -AngloIrish Bank

[pintsofguinness]

My other half pays about €3k a month in tax, nice to know where it goes  Roll Eyes Instead of targetting those in employment, the government should target the long term unemployed.

Aye, I pay 5K 

[Rossfan]

Look at all the jobs under threat - KOSTAL in Abbeyfeale & Mallow could be down the tubes tommorow.

And cutting public service pay will save those jobs  
Get a grip FFS.
All the public sector workers I know-teachers/Gardai/Council/Health people/Civil Service etc spend their money on buying goods/services  from local businesses which keeps the money going round as it's meant to.
Why did so many towns try everything under the Sun to get some public body or govt Dept to decentralise to their place.?
Meanwhile what share of the profits made by the Builders/Developers and Rip off Republic greedy overchargers go back into the local economy? Most of it was spent overseas on all sorts of things...

[muppet]

I would have no problem with targetting the public sector if the Irish banks are nationalised, redefined as 'the public sector' and then massive sacking and pay cuts imposed.

I second the comment about the IBEC Grim Reaper. His name is Turlough O'Connor and despite his clients (banks, Michael O'Leary, Dermot Mannion etc.) taking millions of euros out of the economy for themselves he wants only the workers to pay for it.

BTW rumour of a big North Dublin employer in trouble. 1,000+ jobs.

[Gnevin]

The work practices are a joke . I once had to get an email sent out from  a government department only to be told the person looks looked after email was out sick and that emails would be answered when she came back. I mean thats the problems with civil service a lot of people still have this one man one job mentality where as in the private sector  if you refuse to do something and you will be shown the door .

[comethekingdom]

The work practices are a joke . I once had to get an email sent out from  a government department only to be told the person looks looked after email was out sick and that emails would be answered when she came back. I mean thats the problems with civil service a lot of people still have this one man one job mentality where as in the public sector  if you refuse to do something and you will be shown the door .

You mean PRIVATE sector?

[Gnevin]

The work practices are a joke . I once had to get an email sent out from  a government department only to be told the person looks looked after email was out sick and that emails would be answered when she came back. I mean thats the problems with civil service a lot of people still have this one man one job mentality where as in the public sector  if you refuse to do something and you will be shown the door .

You mean PRIVATE sector?

See that's how tired I am working in the private sector . Can't even think straight 

[stephenite]

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?

Can you get Lambert and Butler down South now?

[Bogball XV]

most ridiculously of all, civil servants here have their pensions linked to the current salary of the person now doing their job!!!  

Word for word from that IBECunt on the radio this morning.
As I understand it public pensioners get the same percentage increases as public sector workers get......that was the way when there were pay increases.
Isnt it great all the same the way the IBECunts having fcuked up the economy now have only one agenda -- to screw the working people and one way to make sure you keep them screwed is to kill off any higher perks/standards that public workers have so they can continue the race to the bottom.
And now we have the BuilderFF Government nationalising the greatest shower of all -AngloIrish Bank

I didn't hear him, but I knew it was bound to come up, we discussed it on here a year ago, poor Smokin Joe was thinking of moving south!!  AFAIK you are wrong re the pension issue though.
Re IBEC and the construction/ff coalition, my previous posts should show that I'm not the most sympathetic to those muppets.  Imo however any rational person should be able to see that there are huge discrepancies between the public sector and private sector and that they're mostly in favour of the public workers, that's not to say that private sector workers are all worse off, but in the current climate, the vast majority are.
Re anglo nationalisation, it was the only option and again I've been calling for this since the guarantee fiasco was announced.

You are right that reducing public sector wages will possibly cost jobs in the wider economy, but it's money that we don't have and that we'll end up paying excessively for in the long run.  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??

The point about huge welfare state payments is also well made and again, these must be cut, apart being unsustainable they are huge disincentives to employment, but once again, cutting these will impact on expenditure in the economy.

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?

[Tankie]

Regardless of a recession or not i believe that there should be a pay cut, but the work practices are just rediculous, what type of a job gives you upto 10 days uncertified sick leave, 35 hour weeks, flexi time, option of a year off, a pension and the fact you will never lose your job. Whats makes things worse is that there is a huge amount of the people on 40k + without a degree or any 3rd level qualification, they are there just so long that they keep getting increases. And to get a job you just need to no somebody, i think the lads in Dell have more skil the most of the civil service!

I find it hard to believe that these clowns feel hard done by.  

By the spelling and punctuation displayed in your posts I think you're the clown and a right wing looney to boot

are you saying that the civil service does not give its workers all these extras?

[thebandit]

The nordies posting here should jump back down from their high horses, the initial question was not directed towards them at all.

Correct and right.

[Double Cross]

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