New national pay deal: 27% raise?

jmayo

DadaKopf wrote: »

Listen, dude, the heads who are keeping back better employment conditions for private sector workers are IBEC - YOUR BOSSES, effectively. Take it up with them. Or form a union. There's no reason why private sector workers shouldn't have better security in or out of work.

The reason is because the powerful employers setting the rules of the game are blocking any progessive effort to improve employment conditions. Obviously one has to accept the volatile nature of the private employment sector versus public (and there are perfectly legitimate reasons why this should be the case). So let's not touch that old chestnut. Let's just agree that workers in the private sector (who aren't emploters) feel a strong sense of injustice about the insane conditions they are expected to put up with to line the pockets of the top 10% of Ireland's rich list who are happily engorging themselves on a bigger slice of our incomes.

So, like, what are YOU gonna do about it?

You can't force an employer to guarantee a person's job.
The real world does not work that way. There are good times and bad times.
That means that a compnay may have lots of business or very little.
How is an employer meant to keep people in work if there is no work coming in and thus no revenue coming into the business ?

Your message really sounds like it was written by a SIPTU shopsteward who is figthing for the workers against the evil capitalistic masters :rolleyes:

Not every employer is a massive rcih cat and a big wig in IBEC.
A lot of employers are small, employing a few people.

IMHO a lot of private sector workers feel more injustice when they see what their public sector brethern get away with

Now if you will forgive me, I have go down pit before my boss catches me on this new fangled computer thingy

DadaKopf

When did I say PERMANENT employment? I didn't, I said there are different conditions in the private and public sectors for very good reasons.

I'm saying... when you're *in* a job, why aren't the conditions better, if so many people are grumbling about the exploitation and alienation, or whatever? And, accepting the fact that people will lose their jobs by their own fault or somebody else's, shouldn't there be better supports for employees when they're in jobs in the first place, and for when they find themselves unemployed?

Conditions don't necessarily equate to PERMANENT EMPLOYMENT. It can mean fixed hours, statutory flexicurity, longer statutory holidays, a better universal pensions system, paternal leave, statutory gender equality in wages, more effective unemployment benefit coupled with more investment in lifelong-learning (Ireland's investment in this is appalingly low), universal childcare, the list goes on, enforcement of employment rights, enforcement of economic, social and cultural rights, more progressive taxation reform for small- and medium-businesses, possibly even reduce or abolish VAT and raise corporate and capital gains taxes ... loads of things can and should be done.

All this comes way before even touching permanent employment, which is rediculous.

So don't come to me with your straw man argument. Extreme cases don't make a strong argument.

IMHO a lot of private sector workers feel more injustice when they see what their public sector brethern get away with

Didn't I just say this. You're just not asking yourself why this is. Perhaps it's because private sector workers have been so weaked by their evil capitalist overlords that they don't believe they can get a fairer deal. I just don't get why people rail so much vitriol at 'The Unions' while IBEC gets away with being called lobby group. It's an employer's UNION ffs.

ballooba

DadaKopf wrote: »

Listen, dude, the heads who are keeping back better employment conditions for private sector workers are IBEC - YOUR BOSSES, effectively. Take it up with them. Or form a union. There's no reason why private sector workers shouldn't have better security in or out of work.

Public Sector workers seem to think money grows on trees. We are your bosses. We haven't had enough say in how you are paid. Things are going to change if there is a serious down turn here. Private Sector workers aren't going to roll over and accept job losses while public sector workers demand a pay rise. It's not right.

ballooba

DadaKopf wrote: »

Conditions don't necessarily equate to PERMANENT EMPLOYMENT. It can mean fixed hours, statutory flexicurity, longer statutory holidays, a better universal pensions system, paternal leave, statutory gender equality in wages, more effective unemployment benefit coupled with more investment in lifelong-learning (Ireland's investment in this is appalingly low), universal childcare, the list goes on, enforcement of employment rights, enforcement of economic, social and cultural rights, more progressive taxation reform for small- and medium-businesses, possibly even reduce or abolish VAT and raise corporate and capital gains taxes ... loads of things can and should be done.

All the things that make France a joke and ensure that French youth cannot get jobs at home.

Socialism is all well and good when you are in a cushy government job freeloading off the fat of the land. Somebody has to create the value in the economy and without entrepreneurs that would be down to the government. And we all know how good they are at running things.

Zulu

Won't someone please think about the pensions!

Zulu

I'm very inclined to say: If you want a pay rise, come join the private sector and work for it.

spank_inferno

Zulu wrote: »

I'm very inclined to say: If you want a pay rise, come join the private sector and work for it.

+1
We look forward to working with you.... please leave your cushy pensions at the door!

SkepticOne

Maybe there should be a special tax paid exclusively by the public sector out of which they fund their pay rises. Then they can give themselves 27%, 45% or 200% pay rises without affecting the others.

jmayo

SkepticOne wrote: »

Maybe there should be a special tax paid exclusively by the public sector out of which they fund their pay rises. Then they can give themselves 27%, 45% or 200% pay rises without affecting the others.

Maybe we should have a poll on this ?
Who here is willing to pay more tax, so that our friends in the public sector can get another pay rise either through the benchmarking process or through someother supposed productivity measure.

After all they are working so hard, some of them even having to deal with us the public for a few stressful hours a day.
The only thing they have to look forward to in life is the few sick days, sorry I mean extra holidays, a year and the nice guaranteed pension at the end of their hard working career.

Maybe we should, as mentioned above, increase capital gains tax and corporation tax.
How about 50% for a start?
That would be enough to see them properly rewarded :rolleyes:

Zulu

Or better still, a fund that their pensions come out of aswell.

Colonel Sanders

not gonna pretend I'm an expert on Industrial relations, but if the government had the balls to introduce performance related salaries and bonuses in some form I assume the unions would still kick up, what I fail to see is how they would justify kicking up about something that is fair, equitable and would surely get the backing of the general public?

SkepticOne

jmayo wrote: »

Maybe we should have a poll on this ?
Who here is willing to pay more tax, so that our friends in the public sector can get another pay rise either through the benchmarking process or through someother supposed productivity measure.

After all they are working so hard, some of them even having to deal with us the public for a few stressful hours a day.
The only thing they have to look forward to in life is the few sick days, sorry I mean extra holidays, a year and the nice guaranteed pension at the end of their hard working career.

Maybe we should, as mentioned above, increase capital gains tax and corporation tax.
How about 50% for a start?
That would be enough to see them properly rewarded :rolleyes:

My proposal as that the public sector's pay rises would be funded purely by a tax levied on public sector workers. This way public sector workers would be free to award themselves (and pay for) whatever pay rises they wish.

taidghbaby

jonny24ie wrote: »

TBH for the work I do as a civil servant (7 years in the service now) I feel I don't get paid enough. 27% is prob only a start off point and they will accept 10 - 15% if offered which I wouldn't mind. As a civil servant your yearly pay rise is under €1000.

I do the following in work:

Build servers,
maintain PC's,
build images for all the machines.
Test new software and harware.
Purchasing.
Cleaning (yes cleaning stores etc)
A bit of development.
Transporting equipment to sites.

Thats a lot of work for a lowly civy don't you think??

your gonna have to excuse me if i dont shed a tear.
im private sector and my phone starts ringin at 7 in the morning and normally doesn stop till 9 at night.
and if i want a pay rise i have 1 option open to me:do more work!

now maybe im bein a bit harsh on ya and you do work hard but for every one of you theres 5 "freeloaders"

a while back i had a year stint in a county council and heres a couple of things i've seen:
1. workers getting sick notes from "family doctors" to take a couple extra weeks off after their summer holidays
2. workers making sure to take ALL their uncertified sick days during a year.
3. workers blatantly abusing flexi-time in front of superiors (i.e. signing each other in)
4. and ive seen this first hand: at the end of the financial year spending whats left in the budget just to make sure they'll get the same amount of funding the following year!
5. crosswords being passed around the office daily.(wasted at least an hours work)

There are others but ive blotted them from my memory!

we should give Michael O'Leary/Sean Quinn a few months stint in charge of each state department to sort it out!!!:)

gordon_gekko

i think we all need to recognise what our public servants give of themselves so selflessly day in day out , all for mother ireland

the public service is incapable of being greedy

your right , im being sarcastic

ballooba

taidghbaby wrote: »

4. and ive seen this first hand: at the end of the financial year spending whats left in the budget just to make sure they'll get the same amount of funding the following year!

BTW, that's pretty much standard practice for anybody working to a budget.;)

astrofool

Indeed it is, especially when companies get larger.

I thought the best anecdotal story about the public sector came from a database engineer, they were designing a database based on a number of transactions per week, and ensured that the specifications of the system were well able to handle that. However, in the field, the system kept on failing or running incredibly slow so as to be unusable. They did some investigation and found out the problem.

95% of the transactions were occurring only when the public sector workers were on overtime, the rest of the time, the system was sitting basically unused.

taidghbaby

ballooba wrote: »

BTW, that's pretty much standard practice for anybody working to a budget.;)

private companies etc can do what they want with their money!
publicly funded oraganisations on the other hand....

spank_inferno

And we learn today that the average private wage is below the average for the top 10 wealthy EU states.

I agree, let all public servents pay their own rate of tax... 28% for our 20%.
49% for our 41%... then they can have all the pay rises they want!

I think a previous poster mentioned they should pay more for their pensions.... unfortunately thats almost right except that its the taxpayer that pays (unfortunately)

National Pensions Reserve Fund Bill, 2000
http://www.finance.gov.ie/viewdoc.asp?fn=/documents/news/june/mcc655pr.htm
The Minister for Finance, Mr Charlie McCreevy TD today, 14 June 2000, published legislation which provides for the establishment, financing and management of a National Pensions Reserve Fund. The purpose of the Fund is to build up assets which will part-finance the Exchequer cost of social welfare and public service pensions from 2025 onwards, when the State’s pensions bill is expected to rise significantly with the progressive ageing of the population