Impact rules out public sector pay cuts

turgon

According to the Irish Times, linky.

Irish Times Article wrote:

Impact general secretary Peter McLoone said he “did not have, would not get, and will not seek” a mandate for pay cuts from his members.

This is exactly what is wrong with trade unionism, they just cant admit that cuts will have to be made, and its ironic that trade unions evolved because of the selfish wants of the owners, not look at what happens.

Reminds me of a quote from Charles Dickens' Hard Times, "their own irrational will, was to pretend there could be smoke without fire, harvest without seed, anything or everything produced from nothing". For there to be progress there must be cuts.

Kristopherus

turgon wrote: »

According to the Irish Times, linky.



This is exactly what is wrong with trade unionism, they just cant admit that cuts will haver to be made, and its ironic that trade unions evolved because of the selfish wants of the owners, not look at what happens.

Reminds me of a quote for Charles Dickens' Hard Times, "their own irrational will, was to pretend there could be smoke without fire, harvest without seed, anything or everything produced from nothing". For there to be progress there must be cuts.

Keep reading Dickens.:D

P. Breathnach

turgon wrote: »

...This is exactly what is wrong with trade unionism...

What a load of rubbish! No union gives away everything at the start of discussions or negotiations.

NewDubliner

If the public sector accepts pay cuts, will the private sector reduce its prices for goods and services?

K4t

The Public Sector have already been made pay a 1% levy to pay for the reckless behaviour of the banks. Why ask them to pay even more?

At a time when tradesmen, shops, retailers etc. are going to increase the amount of money they don't declare to the taxman, you accuse the Public Sector of not pulling their weight?!

ParkRunner

P. Breathnach wrote: »

What a load of rubbish! No union gives away everything at the start of discussions or negotiations.

Agreed! IBEC wanted a 10%-20% cut in numbers in the public service as their opening shot. This is the other sides opening shot which probably means paycuts are on the way

murphaph

NewDubliner wrote: »

If the public sector accepts pay cuts, will the private sector reduce its prices for goods and services?

It already has!!! Have you not noticed inflation is heading for 0% this year?

nhughes100

Let me explain a bit about how the public sector works. When they say there'll be no cuts to wages they mean permenant/pensionable employees won't be hit first. The first thing to go will be the new national wage agreement(6%) Then they'll lean on contractors and part time staff. This will take ages to complete and to be honest I'd be surprised if it finishes this year. Then there will be a voluntary redundancy/early retirement package which will take around 3 years before it starts to pay for itself(using approx 8-10 weeks per year of service capped at 2 years which is what they'd want to be offering to shift people). Add in to this any back money that people are owed, they'll do a quid pro quo on the basis that the governement won't pay the back money and any modernisation/changes to work practice that was tied up in that money will not go ahead.

Now after that if the sh1t is still hitting the fan and Intel decide to head off to China they'll "postpone" increments.

No politician is going to authorise 30-40 thousand job cuts(10 % of public sector), it would be absolute political suicide and I don't care what you think of the various public services but that is going to impact on service to Joe & Mary Bloggs. In any case anyone who works in the private sector will know that if you win a public sector contract/tender you'll be as happy as a pig in. The private sector needs the government to kickstart the economy and start creating wealth again, look at what Obama is trying to do already.

Having been a public servant for the past 10 years I honestly can't see a much different way out of it.

murphaph

nhughes100 wrote: »

Having been a public servant for the past 10 years I honestly can't see a much different way out of it.

Do you not think instead of shedding 10% of the public sector staff it would be viable to impose a 10% pay cut to all staff?

Nobody loses their job so services continue and nobody is paid dole to sit at home. Also no redundancy payments of course.

Whatever happens with redundancy, the payment shoud be no more than the going rate in the US multinational private sector, usually 6 weeks capped at 52 weeks, no shift (Dell did this as did IBM 3 years ago).

ardmacha

Every organisation, public and private, has nonsense expenditure built up in the good times. As a matter of practical reality this waste has to be tackled first. If you go to someone and say I want to cut your wages, that will say whatabout such and such. If such suggestions are pursued then a significant cuts can take place without morale sapping paycuts. For instance why were various government departments running ads in the paper before Xmas giving their holiday season opening hours. Should this information not have been on their websites and on a recorded announcement on their phones?

Kristopherus

The first thing to go will be the new national wage agreement(6%) Then of course the 1% levy. And the HSE & Local Authority will have to work minimum 35 hrs, in other words thats 10% to start. If the private sector make the same sacrifice, thats billions saved in year 1. No increase in Tax credits or increase the base rate to 22% in year two, and screw the banks for the money the got to keep them afloat in year 3 and we should be back to to level sometime in 2012.

dingding

It seems that the public sector are been made the scape goat and having to pick up the cost of the reckless behaviour of the banks.

The solution seems to be that the easy answer is to make the public sector pay for the recklessness of the private sector.

Anglo were bailed out to the tune of 1.5 billion while the government only wanted to give them 1 billion and they immediatly gave their managers bonuses for selling the loans that got the country into the problems that it is in.

murphaph

dingding wrote: »

It seems that the public sector are been made the scape goat and having to pick up the cost of the reckless behaviour of the banks.

Who generates the tax revenue for the exchequer? Not the public sector. The private sector picks up the tab for ALL government expenditure. That's the way it has to be.

dingding wrote: »

The solution seems to be that the easy answer is to make the public sector pay for the recklessness of the private sector.

Banks != the private sector. Believe me, the private sector is hurting MUCH more than the public sector as business finance is nearly impossible to obtain.

dingding wrote: »

Anglo were bailed out to the tune of 1.5 billion while the government only wanted to give them 1 billion and they immediatly gave their managers bonuses for selling the loans that got the country into the problems that it is in.

Indeed. The government fcuked up the recapitalisation. It should have taken a much greater say in the workings of the recapitalised banks. The government is the public sector of course

murphaph

Kristopherus wrote: »

The first thing to go will be the new national wage agreement(6%) Then of course the 1% levy. And the HSE & Local Authority will have to work minimum 35 hrs, in other words thats 10% to start. If the private sector make the same sacrifice, thats billions saved in year 1. No increase in Tax credits or increase the base rate to 22% in year two, and screw the banks for the money the got to keep them afloat in year 3 and we should be back to to level sometime in 2012.

If you think it'd be a 'sacrifice' for me to REDUCE my working week to 35 hours you are living in cloud cuckoo land. I wouldn't know myself going home when it's still light in winter!

NewDubliner

murphaph wrote: »

If you think it'd be a 'sacrifice' for me to REDUCE my working week to 35 hours you are living in cloud cuckoo land. I wouldn't know myself going home when it's still light in winter!

If we could get people to work smarter and not longer, we could save on office heating and electricity bills.

ParkRunner

Brian Lenihan has warned he will have to implement drastic public sector job and pay cuts within a matter of weeks.
After saying something like that he better take some decisive action rather than leaving thousands of civil servants with uncertainty hanging over their heads, who will severly cutback their own personal spending.

jimmmy

The govt should just cut public sector wages by 20 to 30 % and be done with it ; it will happen soon or later, by the IMF or someone else. The sooner the better for the sake of the country.

DarkJager

I'll give you an example, make of it what you will. There is a person in Limerick County Council, earning 40k a year for....putting documents into a scanner and saving them to a hard drive. Tell me in all honesty that this wage packet is justified.

ParkRunner

jimmmy wrote: »

The govt should just cut public sector wages by 20 to 30 % and be done with it ; it will happen soon or later, by the IMF or someone else. The sooner the better for the sake of the country.

If this were to happen it would have to happen not only in the public sector but also in the private sector. Everyone would have to take a hit. I know a lot in the private sector are being made redundant but this is because labour costs are too high. It would only add to the problem in the long term if the wages of civil servants were cut only to pay the social wefare bill of the new unemployed private sector workers without reducing labour costs across all sectors to attract new jobs.

dresden8

He'd want to cull the bankers before he culls the public service.

Or else there will be war.

eoinbn

dingding wrote: »

It seems that the public sector are been made the scape goat and having to pick up the cost of the reckless behaviour of the banks.

The solution seems to be that the easy answer is to make the public sector pay for the recklessness of the private sector.

Anglo were bailed out to the tune of 1.5 billion while the government only wanted to give them 1 billion and they immediatly gave their managers bonuses for selling the loans that got the country into the problems that it is in.

Here is where people are confused. The banking crisis and our massive budget problems are two different issues, with the first one highlighting the second. We have been borrowing to pay our high public sector wage bill for YEARS now. We were borrowing €25-30B each year to buy houses, the government took it's 30% and gave it to the public sector in wage increases. That's not the public sectors fault, it's the government but both need to pay the cost.
The banking crisis just brought it to a head faster than most expected as we stopped borrowing which has forced to the government to admit that we have effectively been running a budget deficit for years.

Firetrap

I wonder how many jobs they'll cut. Despite what the unions are saying, I'm sure there will be pay cuts I just wonder what would be the wider implications of firing loads of public servants?

It's one thing to look at a person's salary, subtract the tax they're paying back into the system and work out that it's cheaper to sack them and pay them dole. What about the mortgages they'll be unable to pay, the shops they won't buy stuff in, the services they won't be using. That sort of thing. And before someone jumps in and makes the point, I'm not saying that this isn't happening already with all the people who are losing their jobs in the private sector.

I wonder will the government sell those sites they acquired for decentralisation? Take their buddies off those useless boards that seem to be de rigeur for every quango and stage body going? Better to do something about these than to put people on the dole.

As an aside, I also think that the heads of those bankers should roll. It's them, with their reckless lending which helped land us all in this situation in the first place.

The Saint

Perhaps if the government took a large pay cut to show an example to the public sector then there might be less resistance to it. It's very difficult to pontificate when TD's are on massively inflated wages and give themselves pay increases willy nilly. Those at the high end of the pay scale in the public sector should take the biggest hit.

Danuogma

DarkJager wrote: »

I'll give you an example, make of it what you will. There is a person in Limerick County Council, earning 40k a year for....putting documents into a scanner and saving them to a hard drive. Tell me in all honesty that this wage packet is justified.

No, you could probably train a chimp to do the same job. I live in Limerick and I can say with 100% certainty that jobs with the Council are not given to people based on what they know, they are given out on the basis of who they know. Some of the clowns working with the council would have a hard time cleaning tables in Burgerking.

RobFowl

Kristopherus wrote: »

The first thing to go will be the new national wage agreement(6%)

It's long gone already , just hasn't been announced yet

The_Minister

K4t wrote: »

The Public Sector have already been made pay a 1% levy to pay for the reckless behaviour of the banks.

*Slap forehead*
I forgot that that only applied to the public sector.

The_Minister

Firetrap wrote: »

As an aside, I also think that the heads of those bankers should roll. It's them, with their reckless lending which helped land us all in this situation in the first place.

The bankers who really are responsible for whats happened don't live here, and aren't even on this continent.

johnnyskeleton

dingding wrote: »

It seems that the public sector are been made the scape goat and having to pick up the cost of the reckless behaviour of the banks.

The solution seems to be that the easy answer is to make the public sector pay for the recklessness of the private sector.

No, the government's recklessness over the last 15 years means that we have nothing in reserve to tide us through a downturn. The government presumed that we would get a massive amount of property related taxes in and spent that money on increasing the public sector. We have one of the largest and best paid public services in the EU, and our public sector has grown disproportionately over the last 5 years or so.

It's not about who takes the hit - public or private sector employees - the issue is that the government is spending too much money and has to cut back. Because public sector workers work for the government, when the government hits hard times it needs to reduce it's costs. This is the exact same as how a private firm, during bad times, will lay off staff or ask for pay cuts.

My view on it is that from a macro-economic point of view it has to be done, we are simply spending way too much on our public sector which is too bloated with quangoes, managers and external consultants. At the same time, private sector employees are getting it in the neck. If benchmarking in the public sector means that public sector employees get rises in line with the private sector, so too must they accept the losses along with the private sector.

johnnyskeleton

EF wrote: »

If this were to happen it would have to happen not only in the public sector but also in the private sector. Everyone would have to take a hit. I know a lot in the private sector are being made redundant but this is because labour costs are too high. It would only add to the problem in the long term if the wages of civil servants were cut only to pay the social wefare bill of the new unemployed private sector workers without reducing labour costs across all sectors to attract new jobs.

Forget about the public v. private aspect, it is purely a matter of the government having to balance their books. They can do this either by cutting expenditure and making public servants unhappy, or else by increasing taxes and destroying whatever remains of the economy.

gandalf

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

My view on it is that from a macro-economic point of view it has to be done, we are simply spending way too much on our public sector which is too bloated with quangoes, managers and external consultants. At the same time, private sector employees are getting it in the neck. If benchmarking in the public sector means that public sector employees get rises in line with the private sector, so too must they accept the losses along with the private sector.

Nail on head.

BTW I see SIPTU have come out with the same old rubbish again.

“We believe that the unilateral imposition of cuts in rates of pay will meet with stout resistance from trade union members generally. If the Government sets about it in that way we in Siptu , and I believe everyone else in the trade union movement as well, will do everything we possibly can to mobilise such resistance.”

Taken from here.

These guys are living in the past and in the present we in the private sector are paying the price with job losses and pay cuts. Time for a reality check.

johnnyskeleton

The_Minister wrote: »

The bankers who really are responsible for whats happened don't live here, and aren't even on this continent.

Do you mean the old chestnut of the international banking crisis? Then why is Anglo Irish in so much more trouble than the others? Most Irish banks lent out money stupidly - recklessly in some cases - and the Irish banking crisis has not yet come to light for the most part. The problems in the Irish banking sector are being kept under wraps by the top brass and the financial regulator. It is obvious that a lot of the loans they have given out to developers are impaired, but the banks themselves are not admitting this. In time we will see that Irish banks have been among the most mismanaged banks in the world.