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National Demonstration set for Feb 21... Are you participating?
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NewDubliner wrote: »That would be because the newspapers are owned by big business.
*Shrug* I've heard members of the CS claiming they shouldn't take any cut, that it was the bank's fault, etc etc. These are also people who have quite a lot of influence in union circles. Just saying that that there are those who are vehemently opposed to any cuts for themselves in any shape (I certainly get the impression that this is the INO's stance). Some of the text in their speeches certainly seems to enhance that idea.BroomBurner wrote:The main reason is that the general public are still mainly ignorant as to why we would be protesting, so it would be hard to garner support.
BroomBurner - are you aware of any proposals by the unions to address the implementation of the levy? Have the CPSU, ICTU or whomever come up with a counter-set of levies that could be used instead? Do you know if they'd favour a pay cut for example over a levy, so no tax relief at the marginal rate thus not disadvantaging the lower paid? I haven't heard much from them about different means, but surely they must have them?0 -
Check out the link. Noticeably missing is any reference to:From what I can make out about the protest on www.ictu.ie this protest is not for public sector workers exclusively, although the ICTU says that this issue of the public sector levy is one of the ten points on their plan for a recovery in the situation facing us. Check out www.ictu.ie
* The need for accountability in both public and private sectors.
* The need for a new benchmarking exercise between the private and public sectors. (That would allow for public sector pay to fall as well as rise.)
* The need to protect the more vulnerable in society.
* The need to cut back on the worst excesses of politician’s pay and perks.
Count me out of this "protest".
That's NOT fair comment. The main theme running through the threads is that, despite the hated Pension Levy, public sector employees are doing OK, relative to the private sector. There is only the occasional, and entirely inappropriate, swipe at the public sector. Most of us appreciate that nobody, but nobody, wants a pay cut.You obviously haven't been reading the threads where public servants are public enemy number 1 then, have you?
+1 The failure to tackle this issue is a testament to the cowardice and incompetency of this government.while the banks have behaved appallingly , I think its unfortunate that the banks are being used as a convenient excuse not to tackle public sector inefficiency , over staffing and over pay relative to our European neighbors’
And having created it, the government now don't have the ball$ to make the necessary cutbacks.donegalfella wrote: »This post has been deleted.
I agree with you, I am one of those professionals who works 45 hrs+ per week, with no overtime. (I'm not complaining, I enjoy my job. But the discrepancy in working hours is rarely considered when comparing public vs. private sector salaries.)People in the private sector still work standard 39 hour week while those in the public sector work 37.5 and some work 35 hours a week. Teachers in the secondary sector have class contact hours of 22 hrs a week. Many professionals have similar short weeks, compare that to Engineers or other professionals in private industry who work even longer hours than the ordinary workers and all unpaid overtime...it is expected.
I agree with you.id have no problem with the unions and public servants opposing the fact that the local guy working a shovel on the side of the road is paying a disproportionately larger amount of his wage towards his pension than the local pompous ass of a judge but that argument is at the bottom of the page in small print , the headlines appear to read that the unions and public sector are against any form of levy or pay cut at all
Quote: Originally Posted by K-9 The latest Quarterly National Household Survey, which measured union membership, published in April of this year, found that there were 551,700 union members in 2007. This is a bit more than a quarter of the workforce, which is over 2.1 million. However, when you consider that there are (depending on how you measure it) about 350,000 employed in the public sector, where the vast majority are union members, it leaves union penetration in the private sector at somewhere less than 15 per cent. Excluding owners and their families and the self-employed, it still leaves union penetration at less than 20 per cent in the private sector. http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/...story35050.asp
The relevancy is that the unions main constituency are the public sector workers. Therefore, the main interest is in protecting the pay and remuneration of the workers in that sector, even where that is not in the interests of public sector workers, or the country as a whole. Even worse, they have developed a cozy relationship with the government itself. Therefore they are compromised and will make no criticism of even the most blatant excesses within the political system. Excesses which are contributing in no small way to the overall problem.BroomBurner wrote: »Sorry, I just don't understand the relevancy of that to the thread.0 -
From the irish times back in september.Half-truths about public service and pay serve us ill
In this section »
acknowledged truths that are not really true at all dominate the financial crisis debate, writes FINTAN O'TOOLE
IN WHAT passes for public debate around the pay talks and the crisis in government finances, two truths are universally acknowledged. One is that, as Enda Kenny put it at the weekend, the public sector is "bloated" and "inefficient". The other is that wages generally are too high and are rising faster than those of our competitors. As usual, when truths are universally acknowledged, they are not really true at all.
The notion of the "bloated" public service is typical of those things that people "know" to be true, regardless of the evidence. It simply doesn't matter that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development pointed out earlier this year that public spending is actually lower in proportion to the size of the economy than it was a decade ago, and that "government policy therefore has actually decreased the total number of public sector employees as a percentage of the labour force and decreased the overall public sector wage bill as a percentage of GDP".
Why does this information simply fail to register among so much of the political class and so many commentators on public policy? Because the idea of a "bloated" public service absolves politicians themselves of responsibility. We can solve problems by sacking all the supposed wasters. We don't have to acknowledge that "inefficient" and "bloated" are not the same thing.
The public service is inefficient, not because it's too big, but because it's so badly run. And it's badly run largely because of a political leadership with a myopic approach to long-term thinking, a love of "catch-all" policies that try to give something to everyone in the audience, poor standards of accountability and an addiction to half-baked schemes like decentralisation and the Health Service Executive that make bad systems worse. Since solving those problems requires a profound change in the political culture, it's easier to spout nonsense about the "bloated" public sector.
The second cliche is that we've lost the run of ourselves altogether when it comes to wages. Again, this is a useful belief insofar as it implies that the problems of the economy were caused by ordinary workers and can thus be solved by them. And again, it doesn't hold much water. Almost a fifth of all employees earn less than €10 an hour, and half of all employees earn between €10 and €20. Anyone who has to live on those wages knows that the first group is barely getting by and the second is doing okay but with little to spare. The problem, of course, is that the vast bulk of people who get to pontificate about wage levels in newspapers, in the Dáil or on the airwaves are not in this half of the workforce.
Okay, the pontificators will say, but we are still paying ourselves more than other economies. The truth is actually more complicated than that. Ireland is, or has been, a rapidly developing economy, quite different from the mature economies of most of western Europe. We're about halfway between the "old" Europe of the West and the "new" Europe of the East - a western economy that's still playing catch-up. And our wage patterns have mirrored this situation pretty accurately.
A recent report by the European Industrial Relations Observatory classifies 28 countries in four bands for real wage rises between 2003 and 2007 - very high, high, medium, low and zero. I'd lay a bet that if you asked most Irish people, subjected as they are to so much one-sided analysis, to place Ireland in this ranking, the bulk of the answers would be "very high" or "high". Actually, the right answer is "medium". We're in a group with the UK (our biggest single trading partner), Finland, Greece and Sweden that's higher than most of the old EU15 states and much lower than most of the new member states.
Pay rose by 4.8 per cent in Ireland in 2007. In the new member states it rose by 12 per cent, and in the EU 27 as a whole by 7 per cent. Adjusted for inflation, the pay rise in the EU as a whole was 2.3 per cent. In Ireland, it was 1.3 per cent.
This holds good even in specific sectors that are important to the Irish economy. In chemicals, for example, wages in Latvia rose by 30 per cent in 2007; in Poland by 10.5 per cent; in Ireland by 4.8 per cent. Even in the "bloated" Civil Service, wages in Ireland rose by 3.3 per cent. In the EU as a whole the figure is 6.2 per cent, and in the new member states it's twice that.
The point of challenging these cliches is not to suggest that we don't have tough choices to make. It's actually to say that the problems we face are far more profound than the cliches imply.
We're deluding ourselves if we think we can get to grips with the big changes that are happening around us by firing some public servants and making life harder for badly paid workers. We need a fundamental reappraisal of where we are and where we're going. We could start by not relying on hackneyed half-truths.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2008/0909/1220629652929.html
obviously people have selective hearing/reading ie what they want to hear/read :rolleyes:0 -
From the irish times back in september.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2008/0909/1220629652929.html
obviously people have selective hearing/reading ie what they want to hear/read :rolleyes:
Indeed, the article is a little out of date.
Tax Revenues are down 30% and the size of the economy is shrinking so the figures are correcting.
A pay bill of €20 Billion and Income of €35 Billion and dropping is the problem.
The article doesn't seem to realise that the Construction bubble that made the economy grow in the last 5 years crashed, so comparing the size of the Public Service to the growth in the economy is stupid.Mad Men's Don Draper : What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons.
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Yeah some hard lessons need to be learned.0
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there are those who are vehemently opposed to any cuts for themselves in any shape (I certainly get the impression that this is the INO's stance). Some of the text in their speeches certainly seems to enhance that idea.
The INO's stance is that their pensions are self-financing, since few recipients ever qualify for a full pension. (as per INO statement on RTE News the day the levy was announced)
If this is in fact the case, why are they being asked to contribute more towards "their pension"?are you aware of any proposals by the unions to address the implementation of the levy? Have the CPSU, ICTU or whomever come up with a counter-set of levies that could be used instead? Do you know if they'd favour a pay cut for example over a levy, so no tax relief at the marginal rate thus not disadvantaging the lower paid? I haven't heard much from them about different means, but surely they must have them?
It's all on the ICTU site. http://www.ictu.ie/publications/fulllist/there_is_a_better_fairer_waydoc/0 -
You do realise that fixing the banking system is not optional and that we have little or not choice over the matter don't you?
The only thing we have to fix is the Irish economy. We don't have to "fix" the banks in the process of doing this. Unfortunately folks like yourself are being rattled into believing that the banks are not despensible.
We have many many options but unfortunately we don't have the vision or leadership to realise them. Every business entity is despensible, exceptions none. Yes there may be a few ripples through the pond after the hand is taken out of the water, but things will return to normal shortly thereafter.
This is the biggest myth running through this country at the moment, that the banks cannot be allowed to fail. The banks are already insolvent and us horsing money into AIB and BOI is just tying the whole economy to the future of the banks, which is default, insolvency and failure. The sooner we get our heads around this and cut the rope between us and doomed financial institutions, the sooner we start putting our economy back together.
This state guaranteed every banking institution in this country a few short months ago and still there is no credit flowing. Still, due to this lack of credit flowing, almost 2,000 people are being added to the dole queue every week DAY. We clearly don't have 1 or 2 years to work out the obvious, it is time to act now and cut our losses and let failures be failures.
People who think that the banks cannot be allowed to fail, are living in a parallel universe and simply do not understand how capitalism works.0 -
The INO's stance is that their pensions are self-financing, since few recipients ever qualify for a full pension. (as per INO statement on RTE News the day the levy was announced)
It's all on the ICTU site. http://www.ictu.ie/publications/fulllist/there_is_a_better_fairer_waydoc/
I presume the 48% rate will be on incomes over €38,000?Mad Men's Don Draper : What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons.
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Check out the link. Noticeably missing is any reference to:
* The need for accountability in both public and private sectors.
You try runnning a business in this country, a small business that is and not some multinational or large organisation/developer that sups in the Fianna Fail tent, and you will know in jig time just how tightly regulated the private sector businesses actually are.0 -
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Why?
It could be inferred that it's for income over 100k.
Too populist and useless when there are less and less people earning over €100,000.
A 7% rise across the board for everybody over €38,000 is fair. I thought that's what the Public Sector wanted, equality and fairness.
I'd also scrap 41% tax breaks on pensions, everybody at 20%.
There already is an additional levy over €100,000.Mad Men's Don Draper : What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons.
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You try runnning a business in this country, a small business that is and not some multinational or large organisation/developer that sups in the Fianna Fail tent, and you will know in jig time just how tightly regulated the private sector businesses actually are.
I agree with you that the SME sector is over regulated. My intended target was big business, particularly the financial sector. It is inexcusable that no one is being held to account for reckless lending and irregular activities.:)0 -
The only thing we have to fix is the Irish economy. We don't have to "fix" the banks in the process of doing this. Unfortunately folks like yourself are being rattled into believing that the banks are not despensible.
We have many many options but unfortunately we don't have the vision or leadership to realise them. Every business entity is despensible, exceptions none. Yes there may be a few ripples through the pond after the hand is taken out of the water, but things will return to normal shortly thereafter.
This is the biggest myth running through this country at the moment, that the banks cannot be allowed to fail. The banks are already insolvent and us horsing money into AIB and BOI is just tying the whole economy to the future of the banks, which is default, insolvency and failure. The sooner we get our heads around this and cut the rope between us and doomed financial institutions, the sooner we start putting our economy back together.
This state guaranteed every banking institution in this country a few short months ago and still there is no credit flowing. Still, due to this lack of credit flowing, almost 2,000 people are being added to the dole queue every week DAY. We clearly don't have 1 or 2 years to work out the obvious, it is time to act now and cut our losses and let failures be failures.
People who think that the banks cannot be allowed to fail, are living in a parallel universe and simply do not understand how capitalism works.
Letting a bank fail I've no problem with, letting the entire banking system fail would amount to more than a few ripples in the pond and I'm not convinced that people who call for such fully realise how big these ripples would be.0 -
Letting a bank fail I've no problem with, letting the entire banking system fail would amount to more than a few ripples in the pond and I'm not convinced that people who call for such fully realise how big these ripples would be.
No, this is the myth that we are all being led to accept. Every business must be able to fail, all capitalism depends upon it. If you cannot trade, then the shutters come down and if you are big enough and bold enough, you will come back to fight on another day, but the day that you cannot trade, then the game is simply up! This is what capitalism is all about!
AIB, BOI, and Anglo Irish Bank should be placed into a highly managed receivership process immediately, which means that loans that can be paid off are paid off and these banks no longer take in new lending business and are basically slowly wound down and dispensed with. End of story and end of problem. The only and I emphasise THE ONLY REASON, this is being resisted, is because if this happens, the board and management within the banks will be gated into hatch 45, plain and simple. This is vested interests operating like we have never seen before, and unfortunately the vested interests have copped that the people making the decisions here, don't actually have a clue what they are at.0 -
No, this is the myth that we are all being led to accept. Every business must be able to fail, all capitalism depends upon it. If you cannot trade, then the shutters come down and if you are big enough and bold enough, you will come back to fight on another day, but the day that you cannot trade, then the game is simply up! This is what capitalism is all about!
AIB, BOI, and Anglo Irish Bank should be placed into a highly managed receivership process immediately, which means that loans that can be paid off are paid off and these banks no longer take in new lending business and are basically slowly wound down and dispensed with. End of story and end of problem. The only and I emphasise THE ONLY REASON, this is being resisted, is because the board and management within the banks will be gated into hatch 45, plain and simple. This is vested interests operating like we have never seen before, and unfortunately the vested interests have copped that the people making the decisions here, don't actually have a clue what they are at.
I don't disagree that banks have far too much power politically and economically. I don't accept that letting banks fail wholesale is good for the economy though. Look at the 1930s depression ffs.0 -
It's all a bit vague and washy though, without concrete figures.It's all on the ICTU site. http://www.ictu.ie/publications/fulllist/there_is_a_better_fairer_waydoc/
For example, it seems to want to go back and talk about re-instating the NPA and claiming not doing so won't have any effect on the economy?!
Removing tax shelters, etc. - good move but would it actually generate significant amounts of income? Creating a third tax band would again look good but, as K-9 points out, would not give us much cash unless the band was set low, around the 50k mark.
Stimulation of the economy - Fair point about deflationary practices, but it's a difficult one to implement with spiralling costs.
Competitiveness - it basically says the State should force us to be more competitive and offers minimalist solutions - sure reduce energy costs, but passing on savings from Sterling? From what I've read, a lot of that is suppliers forcing Irish shops to buy at inflated Euro prices.
With regards to the levy, it just says it's unfair when high earners are getting off without really giving some re-adjusted figures. It even *roll-eyes here* has the favourite line "workers did not create the problem". Sigh.
I do agree with some of it's stuff on the banks - removing the bank execs will do nothing to remove the massive debt, but it would be a great populist measure and might go some way to restoring confidence in the government.
I dunno the proposals don't seem very strong and a bit of hot air. Having said that, it's probably still a bit better than the meaningless nothings being spat out by our government lately.0 -
No, this is the myth that we are all being led to accept. Every business must be able to fail, all capitalism depends upon it. If you cannot trade, then the shutters come down and if you are big enough and bold enough, you will come back to fight on another day, but the day that you cannot trade, then the game is simply up! This is what capitalism is all about!
Darragh, no offence, but I think you are getting slightly carried away with yourself. Letting the entire banking system fail is just stupid and there are no benefits to it that I can see.
Back on topic, I think the protests are going to do more damage if the unions start making demands. The public sector should be grateful they have a job.0 -
If banks arent allowed to fail, why should they seriously consider their risk?
Even if everything goes tits up [ like it has] the public will take on the cost of fixing things. And in personal terms, all the CEOs and board members will have very generous pensions and golden handshakes all lined up. Theres little or no chance of them seeing jail. Thats the lesson that banks will learn from this.
Irelands credit rating is under serious threat because of its efforts to save the banks and the strain its putting on the states already thinning resources. Is Anglo-Irish that important that the banks negligence should be rewarded? That incentives for a supposedly competent business to ignore risk should be introduced? That the states ability to raise capital in international markets should be weakened? To save Anglo Irish?0 -
I don't disagree that banks have far too much power politically and economically. I don't accept that letting banks fail wholesale is good for the economy though. Look at the 1930s depression ffs.Darragh, no offence, but I think you are getting slightly carried away with yourself. Letting the entire banking system fail is just stupid and there are no benefits to it that I can see.
Back on topic, I think the protests are going to do more damage if the unions start making demands. The public sector should be grateful they have a job.
I didn't mean let them fail wholesale, but when you haven't got the cards, then you haven't got the cards and anyone who thinks that it is in our better interests to keep driving forklifts up to AIB and BOI with taxpayers cash, I'm afraid is being misled. They have already failed, that is the point. They are not viable commercial enterprises. They have stopped lending to the economy many months ago, so on that basis alone, they have no useful purpose to serve. Why on earth would you keep commercial businesses alive that simply cannot do what they were set up to do??? It's akin to keeping Dublin Zoo open for visitors but with no animals in the zoo... The game is up, stick on the national anthem and if anyone feels strongly enough about the matter, we'll have a funeral and a minutes silence at the start of the next Ireland game, but the fact remains, the banks are dead and someone somewhere is going to call time of death and call in Larry Massey to take care of the arrangements. Judging by the current form, it will be the IMF...0 -
The game is up lads, will someone give Larry Massey a call and get this over with in a dignified manner so we can all move on.0
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It's all a bit vague and washy though, without concrete figures.
It's perfectly clear like water in the Antartic. They've failed, game over, now who is next. It's that simple. The only people who want is to accept that it isn't that simple are:
(1) The vested interests running the banks, who are being paid millions and who will be down at hatch 45 tomorrow if if it actually turns out to be "simple",as in "game over lads"...
(2) The Finance Minister, who probably knows as much about finance as the orangatauns down in the zoo.
Make no mistake about it, we are being filled with absolute nonsense about what is the "best way" to deal with this crisis. It's like a priest saying to an abuse victim, "you know the best way to do this is to say nothing".
I know I'm touching on David Mc Williams here and I make no apology for doing so. For years we allowed the Catholic clergy in Ireland to tell us what the "best way" was, which involved funnily enough, throwing hundreds of thousands of Euro at abuse victims to stop them going to court. It's funny now, when the same clergy are not that important to us, how we reject comprehensively, what they told us for years was "the best way to deal with the problem"...0 -
donegalfella wrote: »This post has been deleted.
Best thing we can do is nationalise them and then start winding them down. Let the loan books mature, but let no new lending take place. Close them down in a controlled manner and bar the management of these banks from every engaging in business activity in this jurisdiction again, just like how directors of private companies can be disqualified from running a company if they are found to have breached company law.0 -
(2) The Finance Minister, who probably knows as much about finance as the orangatauns down in the zoo.
That's what he has highly paid advisors for.
Unless you know something he and they don't?Mad Men's Don Draper : What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons.
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donegalfella wrote: »This post has been deleted.
Ok, but who picks up the bill for all the deposits lying in all those banks. The State would be liable for a lot more than 7 billion. What I'm interested in is the interim between the banks failing and their replacements rising. The banks don't have enough assets on hand to pay out deposits unless you or I are willing to take part of a mortgage instead of our couple of grand in the bank. Is the chaos and turmoil that would follow their uncontrolled collapse worth it?0 -
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donegalfella wrote: »This post has been deleted.
Which would be fine except for all the guarantees the Government offered before now (even ignoring the big one). The State legally might be liable to repay all deposits lost by the banks collapse. If you think people are out on the streets now, just wait until they can't access their savings any more.
It would also enormously undermine any trust in their replacement banks which would cripple their ability to raise capital through deposits which would make it very difficult for them to function in this country.0 -
donegalfella wrote: »This post has been deleted.
The dislocation while we waited for them to decide if it is worth doing would be intolerable.
Further, given the number of banks in difficulty everywhere, there might be very few candidates to expand into new markets.0 -
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Indeed, the article is a little out of date.
Tax Revenues are down 30% and the size of the economy is shrinking so the figures are correcting.
A pay bill of €20 Billion and Income of €35 Billion and dropping is the problem.
The article doesn't seem to realise that the Construction bubble that made the economy grow in the last 5 years crashed, so comparing the size of the Public Service to the growth in the economy is stupid.
okay fair enough i see what you mean. but the point of that article was to show that even in the good times the increases compared to the european average, like 3.6 to 6.2 just goes to show. Also the point that some people the government and media tell them what to think, they have a closed mind afraid to look the other way.
Some of the posters on these threads today have thrown about negative inaccurate information about the public service and have failed to say anything positive, typical! the main fault of the public service as this article points out lies with the government. who took extraordinary payrises compared to the rest of europe. What they'll do now is not modernise the CS cutback making the system worse than before.
Im not suprised the wall street journal are making us out to be the laughing stock of europe. weve been taken for a ride and will pay for it big time!
I will protest but because of this government. I have absoluetly no problem paying this levy and will pay increased tax if needed but others cant afford it!0
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