ESB pays wage hike to workers

ejmaztec

davton wrote: »

I wouldnt like to be out tonight working in that wind and on a pole ofcourse

Will there be any high-flying overpaid executives up the poles or will they be at home making certain that their exotic car collections are safe from flying debris?

professore

OhNoYouDidn't wrote: »

Replace highly skilled electronic engineers with the unemployed?

This is getting ludicrious. Reminds me of Jackie Healy-Rae demanding that the army drive trains on a days training.

No-one is holding anyone to ransom, can you get off the offended bus. ESB workers are simply getting a pre agreed payrise they got in return for productivity changes. There is a legitimate debate as to whether the unions should agree to a deferral, but lay off the hysterics.

Productivity changes? So my ESB bill will be coming down dramatically then ? Sack 'em all I say. Reaganomics FTW : http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/reagan.years/whitehouse/airtraffic.html

OhNoYouDidn't

You start with this

Nermal wrote: »

Your economics lessons stopped too early.

and end with this..... :eek:

Nermal wrote: »

The supply of workers capable of performing these jobs is actually quite high. The demand is low - there aren't that many positions in the ESB.

The only thing keeping up the obscene wages of these guys is the union and the spinelessness of their management; if the managers had any balls, or interest in saving money, they'd cut their wages by half. They would have no problem retaining most of them - where the hell else do you think these jokers would work, after all - and those who left could be replaced at half the cost.

This nonsense that having some qualifications means you're worthy of high pay is rampant in the public sector. In reality an efficient company would only pay you what it would cost to replace you.

Low demand inflates wages, you heard it here first!!

I think this letter in the Times sums it all up for me...

Calls for public sector pay cuts
Madam, – I have had just about enough of the private sector commentators and so-called “financial experts” who are trying to create ill will between civil and public servants and the people they serve. The constant carping about job security and pensions which, it is alleged, are a burden on “the taxpayer”, serves no useful purpose and is totally misleading. Are they implying that teachers, nurses and gardaí do not pay tax? Unlike many people in the private sector, they are PAYE workers and cannot avoid their taxes.

As a teacher, I am well used to the attitude of certain elements of the private sector, who for the last number of years had a fine contempt for those of us who were not “profit-making entrepreneurs”. The Gordon Gekko mentality of greed and vulgarity ruled supreme in Ireland for more than 10 years and those of us who were not members of the financial elite were treated as utter fools when we said a downturn was coming. I clearly recall a speech by the former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, in which he wondered how people who were talking down the economy didn’t “commit suicide”.

Throughout the Celtic Tiger era, Irish society received a superb return on its very low investment in education – the second lowest of all OECD countries. (Since the recent education cuts, we are now probably at the bottom.) Despite this, educational standards were placed among the highest in the OECD. An incredible bargain, which even an economist should be able to understand.

While gardaí continued to put their lives on the line to protect our freedom and nurses performed miracles in AE departments, teachers faithfully honoured their contract with their students, preparing them for life and always making the deadline for State exams. They also regularly gave up their evenings and weekends, for no extra pay, to support students in sporting, musical, scientific, artistic and other activities. It would be interesting to know how many in the private sector are willing to work in the evenings and at weekends for no pay.

The current appeal to patriotism in the civil and public service I find truly nauseating. A patriot is one who works hard and pays his or her taxes. Throughout the years of the Celtic Tiger, there were no greater patriots than those who worked at “the coalface” and tried to hold the social fabric together while some of those entrusted with the management of the nation’s finances lined their pockets and achieved levels of incompetence and corruption that have left our country a wasteland. Not once have I heard an apology from those whose dishonesty and incompetence have bankrupted the country. Ibec’s suggestion that teachers should now take a salary cut in order to pay for this just beggars belief.

In the wake of limitless greed, we now have limitless arrogance. – Yours, etc,

SUSIE HALL,

Dublin Road,

Malahide,

Co Dublin.

ionix5891

people bitch away at the ESB and the employees (who are good people)


while they dont realise the company is semistate hence one of the arms is tied behind, if it was a normal company they would shut down their plants overnight and move to europe where theres an open market, room to grow and money to be made, irish energy market is a joke and is too small, the network was taken over by state owned eirgrid and anyone can put electricity into it but i can only name 2 companies in ireland who decided to get into the market despite knowing that any electricity generated by wind mills has priority at the grid and is a guaranteed income and knowing that theres a huge opening over next few years as esb is closing its older plants


if anyone is at fault for high electricity prices its the people who dont want power lines, windmills or nuclear plants in their area, but yet they are ok with with coal (from shipped brazil, africa etc), oil (has to be imported from places like middle east and as we know the prices hit record highs few months ago), gas (no sign of corrib field and look at whats happening with russia), and peat (irish peat resources are almost exhausted) plants that send all sort of **** (including radioactive ash and mercury) up the chimney with god knows what effects on the locals


reminds me of people across the corrib from me who want electricity yet dont want a powerline built do deliver that to them, sheesh

We get most of our gas from the North Sea. Did you not read about the recent Russian/Ukranian crisis?

actually your wrong i worked not too far from the energy trading floor, the fuels are bought and sold from a huge range of places including russia which is the cheapest, also in the last 2 years or so the carbon trading thingie was introduced which directly impacts your bill's and in the last year we had a record spike in fuel prices

Blazer

We've the 2nd highest electricity costs in the EU.
That's the reason Dell aren't building a new DC in Ireland. The power costs are far too high.

ionix5891

Mathew Reilly wrote: »

We've the 2nd highest electricity costs in the EU.
That's the reason Dell aren't building a new DC in Ireland. The power costs are far too high.

[OFFTOPIC]
well firstly building computers is not exactly high skilled, the pc in front of me was put together by moi, it aint rocket science, we knew for about a year that Dell where about to go, hell when they bough a big building a year ago in Poland the writing was on the wall....
[/OFFTOPIC]

back to ESB, our costs and bills are high because almost all of our energy is fossil based and has to arrive here by ship or pipeline

once we as a country grow up and come up with a sensible energy policy (nuclear based like France or wind based like Denmark) then we can have lower prices

remember ESBs hands are tied, they cant do windpower as Eirtricity would scream murder, they cant build anymore high efficiency plants either and are in process of closing the old ones

and finally no one wants to discuss Nuclear option...


what we need is a political party that comes up with a sensible energy policy, look at Obama across the pond, an energy policy was there among other issues on top of the list as they are starting to realise that they are attached to the middle east with an expensive umbilical cord

or a private company who either build an interconnector and buy electricity on continent and ship it here or company who gets serious about renewable power, but i dont see that happening as this infrastructure would cost alot of money and banks arent exactly lending money anymore


if anything i am suprised we dont have brownouts especially this time of year when the demand is highest (thanks to the people at esb and eirgrid who are doing a hell of a job)

..

OhNoYouDidn't

Mathew Reilly wrote: »

We've the 2nd highest electricity costs in the EU.
That's the reason Dell aren't building a new DC in Ireland. The power costs are far too high.

we also have the higest food prices in the EU. the wages of the staff in Tesco is well down the list of reasons for why that is.....

thebman

The ESB actually wanted to lower prices about a year ago and the regulator wouldn't let them because they want good profit margins to increase competition at the moment was the reason.

It was all over the radio at the time on Newstalk, Today FM and other stations.

OhNoYouDidn't

brim4brim wrote: »

The ESB actually wanted to lower prices about a year ago and the regulator wouldn't let them because they want good profit margins to increase competition at the moment was the reason.

It was all over the radio at the time on Newstalk, Today FM and other stations.

sssshhhh with the facts, the baying mob are blaming the public sector for everything. Tony O'Reilly has spoken.

Blazer

ionix5891 wrote: »

[OFFTOPIC]
well firstly building computers is not exactly high skilled, the pc in front of me was put together by moi, it aint rocket science, we knew for about a year that Dell where about to go, hell when they bough a big building a year ago in Poland the writing was on the wall....
[/OFFTOPIC]..

DC is a datacenter where Dell would store all servers needed for their EMEA operations.
There's about 5 countries in the running for this.
Ireland are at the very outside due to the power costs needed to keep this DC running.
This is not building pcs but the infrastructure behind them and are skilled jobs.

ionix5891

Mathew Reilly wrote: »

DC is a datacenter where Dell would store all servers needed for their EMEA operations.
There's about 5 countries in the running for this.
Ireland are at the very outside due to the power costs needed to keep this DC running.
This is not building pcs but the infrastructure behind them and are skilled jobs.

sorry my bad i should stop speed reading :P

as someone who runs online services business and manages 3 dozen servers i would agree with you

currently my company sends of servers to US, Germany, Netherlands and Sweden because power and collocation costs are fraction of what they are in Ireland, and more importantly we can buy quality bandwidth in bulk for the servers for 10 to 20 times cheaper than Ireland

now heres where i get really ticked off, ESB have empty collocation boxes all around the country and fiber network thats practically unused and handed to HEANET for peanuts

so yea I could see why you wouldnt want to have a DC in Ireland, tho I heard Microsoft are opening one in Dublin?

irishpancake

gurramok wrote: »

Yes they did. They accepted constant benchmarking pay rises along with normal pay rises throughout the years based on unsustainable tax revenue streams.

Basically, the ESB unions were paid off by Bertie to prevent any strike occurring hence their wage rates skyrocketed.
Instead of showing greed, those same unions should of accepted inflation level or below inflation pay rewards but no, they took inflation busting pay rises.

I do not work for the ESB, but these arguments are hysterical.

To say that ESB workers got bench-marking increases shows total ignorance of the true situation.

ESB workers did not get bench-marking, they are not employed in the Civil or Public services.

ESB are a regulated, Commercial Semi-State Utility Company.

They definitely have high wages, which were gotton by negotiation and agreement, and a partnership approach to Industrial Relations, which has delivered for this country a first-class Electrical Generation and Distribution system. This is internationally recognized.

For people here to suggest that mass sackings, as done by Reagan of ATC's and "taking on the Unions" as Thatcher did just shows where these commentators are coming from.

It is widely acknowledged that it was precisely the economic policies of both these leaders which has led to the economic devastation now being experienced world-wide.

The Enron Corporation was one of the former utilities in the US, which was freed-up from Regulation under Reagan/Bush, etc. and this resulted in them becoming a so-called energy trader. They manipulated the energy market and caused rolling black-outs and massive price increases in California.

Of course, we here have our own experience with Eircom, which was a very successful Semi-State Telco, until our own greedy politicians allowed it to be privatised and assett stripped by a series of owners trying to extract the maximim value for themselves, and ignore the National Interest.

Appleguy

jmayo wrote: »

The lunatics are in charge of the asylum :rolleyes:
How the feck can this be condoned at this time :mad:
If anything electricity charges should be slashed and the wages of ESB cut not increased.

This country is well and truly f***ed.
Anyone have the IMF phone number because with carry on like this it is only a matter of time.

ESB workers are some of the best most talented workers in the country, they deserve every penny in my opinion.

Ya can talk until your blue in the face about this but no matter what ESB provide one of the safest energy systems in the world
and if you start cutting pay in there left right and centre you will all be crying when your electricity is gone.

And NO I DON'T WORK FOR THE ESB. Its from what i have seen.

juuge

Appleguy wrote: »

ESB workers are some of the best most talented workers in the country.....

So I take it you are happy to pay whatever ESB bill that comes through your letterbox !

ionix5891

juuge wrote: »

So I take it you are happy to pay whatever ESB bill that comes through your letterbox !

if your not happy switch providers (see airtricity and others)

then push the government to encourage more renewable energy options and look into nuclear power again

as i mentioned above the costs of your esb bill have nothing to do with the wages of their employees (see previous post about a huge rise in fuel costs due to international speculation on commodity markets)

btw a good 100 euro increase of the average family bill per year for the last few years is due to the carbon trading that we are part of for due to our Kyoto obligations

you can close the ESB and buy the electricity abroad and it still be more expensive than rest of EU as the costs of transports and building new interconnectors would be in billions since were on the periphery

.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

If Diagio pay the wgae deal will you complain about the print of a pint?

I never read so much begruddery and ignorance...

Appleguy

juuge wrote: »

So I take it you are happy to pay whatever ESB bill that comes through your letterbox !

If i want a service i have to pay for it.

I would consider myself a lot happier paying the ESB than that shower at NTL because the ESB keep me content in every way unlike that other shower.

OhNoYouDidn't

juuge wrote: »

So I take it you are happy to pay whatever ESB bill that comes through your letterbox !

that has nothing to do with the workers though. Kyoto, fuel price increases, the fact that we are an island do.

we have a safe, efficent system that is rarely interrupted. that is due to the workers

Blazer

I'm not complaining about the workers...we all know they do a great job.
However to state that worker's wages have no impact on ESB prices is ridiculous.
Anything that adds to a manufacturers costs be it wages/ oil prices/ transport costs ,all these have an impact on prices.

ionix5891

Mathew Reilly wrote: »

I'm not complaining about the workers...we all know they do a great job.
However to state that worker's wages have no impact on ESB prices is ridiculous.
Anything that adds to a manufacturers costs be it wages/ oil prices/ transport costs ,all these have an impact on prices.

do the maths yourself the financial data is public (extra brownie points for calculating % of total costs due to wages, then calculating what that % amounts to on your last bill ... )


see page 19

emission costs, employee costs, fuel costs, operations and maintenance etc


http://www.esb.ie/main/downloads/about_esb/esb_summary_regulatory_financial_statements_2006_v1.0.pdf


edit: note the above is for up to 2006, as anybody who driven a car in last 2 years or filled up home oil tank or paid gas bill would tell you the fuel costs since 2006 went insane with a ridiculous peak only a few months ago
.

ejmaztec

Olive Unsightly Senior wrote: »

If Diagio pay the wgae deal will you complain about the print of a pint?

I never read so much begruddery and ignorance...

Perhaps ESB workers are paid more so that they can combine their normal duties with public relations. :pac:

ionix5891

since theres alot of emotion and bul**** on this thread and no hard facts


I did the maths using the link i posted above for the data provided for 2006 (when they made 263 million profit after costs of 4246.9million and after millions in taxes to the state)

the employee costs across all divisions were 313.9 million out of total (employee,fuel,emmissions,operations,depreciation) costs of 4246.9 million


which amounts to EMPLOYEE costs of about 7.4%


lets assume they they all take paycut cutting their wages in half (or they are all fired and replaced by cheaper immigrants since thats a popular line of threads lately here) and the savings are passed on directly to customers

thats still a tiny part of everyones bill (~5% to 7%) also remember since 2006 there has been a crazy rise in fuel prices and since we as a country slept thru the celtic tiger instead of investing in renewable power and an nuclear power we are now footing ever increasing bills

Q.E.D

ejmaztec

ionix5891 wrote: »

since theres alot of emotion and bul**** on this thread and no hard facts


I did the maths using the link i posted above for the data provided for 2006 (when they made 263 million profit after costs of 4246.9million and after millions in taxes to the state)

the employee costs across all divisions were 313.9 million out of total (employee,fuel,emmissions,operations,depreciation) costs of 4246.9 million


which amounts to EMPLOYEE costs of about 7.4%


lets assume they they all take paycut cutting their wages in half (or they are all fired and replaced by cheaper immigrants since thats a popular line of threads lately here) and the savings are passed on directly to customers

thats still a tiny part of everyones bill (~5% to 7%) also remember since 2006 there has been a crazy rise in fuel prices and since we as a country slept thru the celtic tiger instead of investing in renewable power and an nuclear power we are now footing ever increasing bills

Q.E.D

Perhaps the fuel importers weren't too hot on negotiating prices, as they knew that the consumer would pay for it whatever it was.

If the importers' job depended on their negotiating a better price, they would have had more incentive and the consumer would have in turn got a better deal.

ionix5891

ejmaztec wrote: »

Perhaps the fuel importers weren't too hot on negotiating prices, as they knew that the consumer would pay for it whatever it was.

If the importers' job depended on their negotiating a better price, they would have had more incentive and the consumer would have in turn got a better deal.

as i said earlier i worked (theres a huge number of contract workers on average wages) not too far from trading area but theres quite an incentive (financial) for fuel traders to keep the fuel costs down, i cant go into details but i was myself involved in my short time there on projects that could potentially save millions (and probably has since) due to better forecasting models, thats alongside other projects such as closing old/dirty plants and spending third of a billion on one of the worlds largest coal plant emmisions cleanup projects http://www.esbelectricmail.com/_archives/em_archive/archives/may2008_em/pgen/may08_pgen1.htm]Moneypoint Environmental Retrofit Project


ESB is not a state company anymore (more like 4-5 companies under same name with very tight regulations) and theres a quite a strong drive to make profit (as any private company would) for shareholders (state and employees themselves own large stakes) and the company is probably one of the biggest tax payers in the country

.

johnnyc

i have read about why our electricity is so expensive from the recent contributors....The price of oil,coal and gas have come down alot from the peak. Its an absolute joke the esb staff have had a pay rises when deflation is coming into play and people are losing there jobs which might include the high cost of electricity. Look an absolute fact here for you back 5 years ago the esb was the 2nd cheapest energy provider in europe, what the hell has happened?

thebman

johnnyc wrote: »

i have read about why our electricity is so expensive from the recent contributors....The price of oil,coal and gas have come down alot from the peak. Its an absolute joke the esb staff have had a pay rises when deflation is coming into play and people are losing there jobs which might include the high cost of electricity. Look an absolute fact here for you back 5 years ago the esb was the 2nd cheapest energy provider in europe, what the hell has happened?

See my post on the regulator keeping prices high in an erfort to "promote competition" with the ESB.

ESB publically came out and said that they wanted to lower prices but weren't allowed to in case they'd kill off the competition which the government didn't want to happen.

ionix5891

johnnyc wrote: »

i have read about why our electricity is so expensive from the recent contributors....The price of oil,coal and gas have come down alot from the peak. Its an absolute joke the esb staff have had a pay rises when deflation is coming into play and people are losing there jobs which might include the high cost of electricity. Look an absolute fact here for you back 5 years ago the esb was the 2nd cheapest energy provider in europe, what the hell has happened?

did you just completely ignore my posts and points?

they are not a state company anymore and they run their business very well, esb employees are not state servants what they earn is non of your concern

employee costs are a small portion of your ESB bill, and if you don't like it then switch providers, the grid is controlled by the state and open to many power companies (with preferential treatment to small, green, new companies)

juuge

OhNoYouDidn't wrote: »

..... efficent system that is rarely interrupted.....

Rubbish !....I was born in south wicklow and when I was living there every time there was a strong wind we were left without power. Usually it was a branch of a tree in a forrest that caused a fuse to trip and it took six men (plus a kettle) half a day to fix it,and if it was at the weekend it would take twice as long to put it right, something to do with 'double time' etc. Shower of w**kers the lot of them.

DeirdreD

juuge wrote: »

It is a national disgrace that this should go ahead at this time. The ESB workers on average are the best paid jobs in the country, why? because they have the power to hold the country to ransom. It is time the ESB was sold off and just like the public service a major clean out should take place.

+1

gurramok

ionix5891 wrote: »

actually your wrong i worked not too far from the energy trading floor, the fuels are bought and sold from a huge range of places including russia which is the cheapest,

No, you're wrong and you just said it. Re-read, i said 'most', not all. They are sourced from many places and Russia is just one where the Norh Sea is probably most.. Other countries highly depend on Russian gas hence the recent outages there.

back to ESB, our costs and bills are high because almost all of our energy is fossil based and has to arrive here by ship or pipeline

This is been a tad dishonest. It was said in this thread we had one of the cheapest electricity costs in Europe 10 yrs ago!

I did the maths using the link i posted above for the data provided for 2006 (when they made 263 million profit after costs of 4246.9million and after millions in taxes to the state)

the employee costs across all divisions were 313.9 million out of total (employee,fuel,emmissions,operations,depreciation) costs of 4246.9 million


which amounts to EMPLOYEE costs of about 7.4%

So Deloitte are liars then?

employee costs are a small portion of your ESB bill, and if you don't like it then switch providers, the grid is controlled by the state and open to many power companies (with preferential treatment to small, green, new companies)

Residents cannot switch like that, it ain't worthwhile!

So as we face economic Armageddon with the highest electricity costs in the EU and the blame is now put on the publicly funded regulator, what do you propose to lower prices?

If prices are not lowered, the ESB will not make any money from Ireland as there will be less and less Industrial users of electricity as they along with many residential users will have fecked off to cheaper locations on mainland Europe/world.