Public Service, Public Servants - a Challenge ... grrr!

Kimbot

Sleepy wrote:

College graduates who are far cheaper? And from my experience dealing with public sector IT people, probably more capable.

Hmmmm...... College Graduates you say??? And how do you deem that they will work out cheaper??? The civil service has a set pay for each grade, as previously stated I am on 30,000 a year. We had college stundents in here for the summer months and they were working on a larger pay scale than myself!!

Colonel Sanders

CherieAmour wrote:

To the person who queued up to claim rent relief - waste of time! In order to help the tax payer to understand tax credits and to make sure everyone was getting what they're entitled to, Revenue have launched an online service - you should have gotten a letter in the post about it. I did mine online in 5 minutes and got my credits fixed up within a fortnight, money back etc.

Applied for a pin weeks ago and am still waiting for it!!!

Kimbot

Colonel Sanders wrote:

Applied for a pin weeks ago and am still waiting for it!!!

Revenue are updates systems at the minute so it will be stalled somewhat until the new release goes live over the weekend!!

Sleepy

jonny24ie wrote:

It wasn't a union report, if you read my previous post you will see that it was an independant study carried out with its findings being giving to the unions etc!!

So an 'independent' study prepared for the unions, yes? Without seeing the report, all your offering is the equivalent of 'my mate works for the HSE and he said the immigrants are all gettin' free cars!'.

At the end of the day do you know any computer programmers with 2 years experience earning under 30,000 a year??? I doubt you do, thats what I am paid and I work my rear off for it!!

The old service is gone, people are getting sacked and suspended for all their stupid actions, i.e. abusing the flexi system/always being sick/etc.... They have done a lot over the past few years that drag the service into line iwth the private sector. You think of it, if there were no civil servants who would be there to pay out the social welfare or manage the tax structure in the country etc.

I didn't make over 30k until my third year in IT either and most people I know with only 2 years experience earn in or around your salary (+/- 3/4k) . People still seem to forget that IT salaries ain't what they used to be in the dot com days. If you're so unhappy with your pay why are you still in the job?

Look, I've said this many times in this thread: I don't think all public sector employees are lazy or have cushy numbers. I do believe that due to the mismanagement of the sector by both the government and the country's most senior civil servants, there are proportionately more people in cushy numbers in the public sector than in the private. I do believe that in general public sector employees enjoy more benefits that those in the private sector and are under less pressure to perform. I also believe that public sector employees also have to deal with more politicised work-places than us private sector employees and that they don't enjoy the same opportunities for career progression. Like I keep saying, it's swings and roundabouts and it annoys me when public sector unions forget this.

Macy

A few things...

• If a Private company relocates outside of a reasonable commute then the employee's are treated as being made redundant if they don't move. This is the reason decentralisation is "voluntary" in the eye's of the Government, and why they'd rather try and white wall staff into leaving of their own accord.
  
• At Clearical Officer level, it's 21 days leave. The statutory minimum is 20 days. Hardly excessive. Yes at higher grades they get more leave, same as the private sector, which is probably where the 28 days above came from. Incidentally, the amount of flexi leave you can take reduces as your annual leave goes up, so it often results in staff giving more time to their employers rather than less.
  
• The perception on Public Service Pay is largely down to mis information. All that's quoted is the average pay, which includes TD's and Senators as well as the higher levels of the civil and public service. It also includes high overtime employments like the cops and prison officers. At the lower levels pay doesn't match the private sector, it's stuff like pensions and flexible working that keep people in the public service.
  
• The public service probably does suffer from too many chiefs in middle management. However, much of this is down to the controls required legislatively on spending public money, and in many instances in the place I work down to EU regulations.
  
• The Public and Civil Service have no control over what they are charged to do. The Ministers make the decisions and the civil servants have to implement it. The biggest wastes in the public service aren't down to civil service incompetence or inefficiency, their down to political strokes and mismanagement. For example Decentralisation.
  
• Public service monopolies becoming Private sector monopolies does nothing for the consumer.
  
• Most examples of outsourcing cost the state more than keeping jobs in house. Recent major example is the refunding of the nursing home fee's, which has been outsourced and still not paid and is costing millions. South Dublin County Council tried to outsource some of it's maintenance divisions, until the unions proved it was cheaper to keep them in house. In a hell of a lot of cases the ones that gain from outsourcing are the fat cats and the shareholders - it costs the state more, and the workers are paid less with worse terms and conditions.
  
• To the fella that had people showing up late and leaving early on a job. So what - that's the whole point of flexi. You don't have to balance on an individual day or even an individual week, but at the end of a period.

sovtek

Sleepy wrote:

I didn't make over 30k until my third year in IT either and most people I know with only 2 years experience earn in or around your salary (+/- 3/4k) . People still seem to forget that IT salaries ain't what they used to be in the dot com days. If you're so unhappy with your pay why are you still in the job?

Yes you can't name your salary like the good ol days but a computer programmer with two years experience making below 30k is not industry standard.
I'm a lowly Network Admin and I've never made below that.

Look, I've said this many times in this thread: I don't think all public sector employees are lazy or have cushy numbers. I do believe that due to the mismanagement of the sector by both the government and the country's most senior civil servants, there are proportionately more people in cushy numbers in the public sector than in the private. I do believe that in general public sector employees enjoy more benefits that those in the private sector and are under less pressure to perform. I also believe that public sector employees also have to deal with more politicised work-places than us private sector employees and that they don't enjoy the same opportunities for career progression. Like I keep saying, it's swings and roundabouts and it annoys me when public sector unions forget this.

What I don't understand is why you want the public sector to be subject to the same ****ty standards as the
private sector. Shouldn't you be more outraged at the private sector (and more sympathetic to the unions that attempt to make things better)?

Colonel Sanders

Macy wrote:

A few things...

[*]To the fella that had people showing up late and leaving early on a job. So what - that's the whole point of flexi. You don't have to balance on an individual day or even an individual week, but at the end of a period.
[/LIST]

Excuse me? The point I made was people I know being present in the office for maybe 5 hours a day (including lunch breaks). As i said another used to clock in after lunch and go to the gym. How is that fair play? No way would I get away with that in my job.

My participation in this thread is along the lines on Sleepy's, I am trying to highlight waste in all parts of the public sector, not to attack any individual. maybe I'm going off the point of the thread and if so my apologises.

Kimbot

Colonel Sanders wrote:

Excuse me? The point I made was people I know being present in the office for maybe 5 hours a day (including lunch breaks). As i said another used to clock in after lunch and go to the gym. How is that fair play? No way would I get away with that in my job.

My participation in this thread is along the lines on Sleepy's, I am trying to highlight waste in all parts of the public sector, not to attack any individual. maybe I'm going off the point of the thread and if so my apologises.

I agree that people do that with their flexi clocks but head of departments are clamping down on that are are taking note and punishing culprits of it!! It used to be common practise but now if you are caught keying out for another member of staff both people can be given the sack!!

Sleepy

I don't want the public sector to lose the advantages they have over the private sector. I just believe they don't have a right to point to ways that private sector employees have it better than them and ask for parity without acknowledging that they have things better in other areas.

I'm not outraged at the private sector for not giving me longer holidays, better pension options etc. I'm pretty happy to do my job for the salary that I'm paid under the conditions I have. TBPH, my gripes about my job would tend to be inefficiencies and mistakes I believe we are making as an organisation rather than ways in which my employer treats me.

I'm far from sympathetic to unions in Ireland as I believe most of them are made up of the greediest, least capable people in any given organisation and tend to behave as if the rest of the world are being graced by their contribution of labour to society. I look at employment as being a contract between myself and my employer. I provide them a service, they pay me for doing it. If I'm happy to provide a given level of service for a given price, I'll take the job. If not, I'll get a better job or up-skill myself so that I can get a better job. Society doesn't owe me a living any more than I owe it my labour.

Now, you might argue that my thinking is a product of living in a country where jobs are plentiful and there's a validity to this point. However, if you look at the industries with the strongest unions and those with the most inefficiencies there's a pretty strong correlation between them. I believe in meritocracy, productive employees should be allowed to earn more than their non-productive counterparts and I see unions as something which lead to everyone receiving more averaged salaries at the expense of the most talented/hardest working.

Kimbot

Sleepy wrote:

So an 'independent' study prepared for the unions, yes? Without seeing the report, all your offering is the equivalent of 'my mate works for the HSE and he said the immigrants are all gettin' free cars!'.

It was actually prepared for the departments and unions!! At the end of the day your start off pay as a clerical officer is a low 21000 a year i think it is now!! Depending on what area you work in in the service that is very poor, people in Immigration areas take a lot of grief from non-nationals when decisions are reached and not to their liking, social welfare officers get the brunt of it when queues are too long, some of the abuse I got off customers over the years was unreal and nothing can be done about that apart from putting up with it!!

Sleepy wrote:

I didn't make over 30k until my third year in IT either and most people I know with only 2 years experience earn in or around your salary (+/- 3/4k) . People still seem to forget that IT salaries ain't what they used to be in the dot com days. If you're so unhappy with your pay why are you still in the job?

What area of IT were you in??? A programmer in the private sector with no experience starts off on nearly €40,000 a year!! I am not unhappy with my job, I like it I am only stating a fact that people enjoy their jobs and are paid peanuts and all others can do is give out about them!!

Gurgle

jonny24ie wrote:

A programmer in the private sector with no experience starts off on nearly €40,000 a year!

LOL

Pure fantasy mate!

sovtek

Colonel Sanders wrote:

Excuse me? The point I made was people I know being present in the office for maybe 5 hours a day (including lunch breaks). As i said another used to clock in after lunch and go to the gym. How is that fair play? No way would I get away with that in my job.

and i know a manager in my company that leaves an hour early every other day, has called in sick without a medical cert way beyond her sick leave and is late almost everyday.
Hell my MD hasn't been in the last two Fridays.

My participation in this thread is along the lines on Sleepy's, I am trying to highlight waste in all parts of the public sector, not to attack any individual. maybe I'm going off the point of the thread and if so my apologises.

As already pointed out...there is waste in any large org.

Kimbot

Gurgle wrote:

LOL

Pure fantasy mate!

Take a look around, I have been onto recruitment agencies etc cos I am looking to buy a house down the country and that is the start off on a lot of the jobs!!
Even if it wasn't surely after being there for 2 years you would be on more than that!!

sovtek

Sleepy wrote:

Now, you might argue that my thinking is a product of living in a country where jobs are plentiful and there's a validity to this point. However, if you look at the industries with the strongest unions and those with the most inefficiencies there's a pretty strong correlation between them. I believe in meritocracy, productive employees should be allowed to earn more than their non-productive counterparts and I see unions as something which lead to everyone receiving more averaged salaries at the expense of the most talented/hardest working.

The last stat I saw showed that industries with the most union participation earn more and get better benefits.
Unions are the reason you have all of the benefits you've mentioned so far. I've also pointed to where unions aren't strong and the company will take advantage of that situation to not pay their hard working employees, and when it profits them to lay off those hard working employees.
That being said there are greedy/corrupt union officials and union members...unlike their corporate counterparts, of course.

ferdi

end the joke that is public sector jobs for life and things will change as the slow, stupid, inefficient and incompitent are weeded out.

Macy

Colonel Sanders wrote:

Excuse me? The point I made was people I know being present in the office for maybe 5 hours a day (including lunch breaks). As i said another used to clock in after lunch and go to the gym. How is that fair play? No way would I get away with that in my job.

That wasn't actually aimed at you - more at Sleepy and his 9.30-4 "experience". I wouldn't get away with the above in my Public Sector job either, it's not representative of the public service overall. My mates in one the private sector employment get half days to go off and play golf with their boss every few weeks in the summer - what does that say about the whole private sector? f all - about as much as the incidents above say about the whole public sector.

I repeat the major causes of wastage in the Civil and Public Sector are down to Government decisions and mismanagement, and are not due to staffing levels or inefficiencies.

Sleepy

sovtek wrote:

The last stat I saw showed that industries with the most union participation earn more and get better benefits.
Unions are the reason you have all of the benefits you've mentioned so far. I've also pointed to where unions aren't strong and the company will take advantage of that situation to not pay their hard working employees, and when it profits them to lay off those hard working employees.
That being said there are greedy/corrupt union officials and union members...unlike their corporate counterparts, of course.

Employees earning more and having better benefits is all well and good until it makes the company unprofitable (see the ESB as a great example of the problems attached to unions). In the private sector, if a company doesn't make money, it goes to the wall. In the public sector, that isn't an issue.

If all companies were run on the basis of paying their employees as well as possible, they wouldn't be profitable. If they weren't making profits, there'd be no tax revenue to pay for our public services. Balance is needed and imho, employees should be paid according to what they contribute.

CherieAmour

Macy wrote:

• At Clearical Officer level, it's 21 days leave. The statutory minimum is 20 days. Hardly excessive. Yes at higher grades they get more leave, same as the private sector, which is probably where the 28 days above came from. Incidentally, the amount of flexi leave you can take reduces as your annual leave goes up, so it often results in staff giving more time to their employers rather than less.

It's actually 20 days for a CO, rising to 21 after 5 years and 22 after 10. That's all you can get. Yes annual leave rises depending on what grade you're in. A lot of higher up Civil Servants with, like, 31 days, don't often take them all and lose a lot of it of their own free will.

oscarBravo

mountainyman wrote:

In this area as in all others you don't know what you are talking about.

Guess who just earned himself a week off.

Sleepy, if you have a problem with a post, report it - thanks.

sovtek

Sleepy wrote:

Employees earning more and having better benefits is all well and good until it makes the company unprofitable (see the ESB as a great example of the problems attached to unions). In the private sector, if a company doesn't make money, it goes to the wall. In the public sector, that isn't an issue.

If all companies were run on the basis of paying their employees as well as possible, they wouldn't be profitable. If they weren't making profits, there'd be no tax revenue to pay for our public services. Balance is needed and imho, employees should be paid according to what they contribute.

How would a company paying their employees as good as they can make them not profitable?
The reason unions formed was as a direct result of the private sector not paying them for what they contribute.
Is it not correct that PAYE makes up the largest portion of income tax.

Sleepy

Sovtek, lets go back to economics 101:

To engage in any business one needs two essential things:

Labour - provided by employees who are rewarded with wages
Capital - provided by the business owner(s) who are rewarded with profit.

If the business owners are prevented from running their business properly due to militant unions who are looking for excessive wage reward, they'll fold the business if they're unable to turn a reasonable profit from the enterprise. Thus everyone loses. PAYE isn't being paid as no-one's earning money, corporate tax isn't earned because there's no profit to be taxed.

Unions were needed in the past, when there was no legislation in place to protect worker's rights. These days they're simply a nuisance, a relic from different times that are in no way relevant to the developed world.

Macy

Sleepy wrote:

Unions were needed in the past, when there was no legislation in place to protect worker's rights.

You're right, incidents like Irish Ferries and Gama prove that we can leave it all up to the Employers and Government to stop exploitation of workers...

We wouldn't have the legislation in place if it wasn't for the unions, including those in the latest national wage agreement. IBEC being happy to sign off any pay deal once the Labour Inspectorate wasn't increased and Labour Laws weren't tightened should tell you a lot about why Trade Unions are still needed.

sovtek

Sleepy wrote:

Sovtek, lets go back to economics 101:

Sorry? Are you a professional economist?

Sleepy

Macy wrote:

You're right, incidents like Irish Ferries and Gama prove that we can leave it all up to the Employers and Government to stop exploitation of workers...

We wouldn't have the legislation in place if it wasn't for the unions, including those in the latest national wage agreement. IBEC being happy to sign off any pay deal once the Labour Inspectorate wasn't increased and Labour Laws weren't tightened should tell you a lot about why Trade Unions are still needed.

Not Irish Ferries again. Of course our government should have interfered in the actions of a company operating under another country's legislation :rolleyes: We've gained massively from globalisation, it's a bit of a cheek to whine about the loss of some low-skill, low-income jobs when we're taking high-skill, high-income jobs from the states on a weekly basis.

Weren't Gama prosecuted for their actions? Weren't the staff compensated? Proof of the law working if you ask me.

Yes, the trade unions deserve credit for getting the laws put in place, but those laws have rendered their authors obsolete imho.

sovtek wrote:

Sorry? Are you a professional economist?

Professional? No.
Qualified? To the point where I have a B.Comm and six years of studying economics if you take LC into account.

Macy

Sleepy wrote:

Weren't Gama prosecuted for their actions? Weren't the staff compensated? Proof of the law working if you ask me.

After it was pursued by the Unions and the Socialist Party. The Government were quite happy with the situation, but I suppose they would be after personally inviting them in. GAMA would never have been inspected if it wasn't for the intervention of the unions and socialist party, just as the labour inspectorate would not have increased powers and increased numbers if it wasn't for the unions. Trade Unions more important than ever with such a business focussed Government, happy to facilitate the race to the bottom in anyway it can.