Are the public sector workers/unions in cloud cuckoo land?

P. Breathnach

leitrim lad wrote: »

the only way out of this is to reform the public sector with a lorry load of p45s for the persons involved in loitering with unions that have no meaning

Given your pattern of tendering fact-free arguments and of expressing uninformed prejudices, it might be time for you to collect your P45 from this forum. You are loitering; you are doing nothing useful; you are upsetting some of the more sensitive souls among us.

leitrim lad

no need to get upset now

the truth is tough but some of these people dont understand what has already happened in the private sector ,and slowly but surely it is now coming to them

the point of a union stopping the already slow services to strike for no apparent reason is pointless and about as pointless as the union in the first place

meglome

leitrim lad wrote: »

no need to get upset now

the truth is tough but some of these people dont understand what has already happened in the private sector ,and slowly but surely it is now coming to them

the point of a union stopping the already slow services to strike for no apparent reason is pointless and about as pointless as the union in the first place

You openly admit to being a Fianna Fail supporter so really you did this to yourself. You are to blame for where you find yourself.

This doesn't take away from me having serious problems with the Unions for how they're behaving, which is why I started this thread. Back on topic anyone?

dave-higgz

Another person I think who's in cloud cuckoo land is Joe Higgins. He basically wants the workers to strike at the airports because they were promised it under the national wage agreement. Does this guy have a clue?

He made the point that if the workers had more money then they could spent it on things that would revive our retail sector and thus show "solidarity" with the unemployed. We are (I'm assuming now) in a deflationary economy and that means people are afraid to spend whether they have the money or not!
Deflation also says that everyone should take a pay cut and I think that's the way it has to be.

meglome

dave-higgz wrote: »

Another person I think who's in cloud cuckoo land is Joe Higgins. He basically wants the workers to strike at the airports because they were promised it under the national wage agreement. Does this guy have a clue?

He made the point that if the workers had more money then they could spent it on things that would revive our retail sector and thus show "solidarity" with the unemployed. We are (I'm assuming now) in a deflationary economy and that means people are afraid to spend whether they have the money or not!
Deflation also says that everyone should take a pay cut and I think that's the way it has to be.

This strike action is a farce, it really is.

P. Breathnach

leitrim lad wrote: »

no need to get upset now...

I agree. I'm not upset. I wasn't thinking of myself when I mentioned the sensitive souls among us.

Your style of argument does nothing useful. You present a set of prejudices and some unverifiable claims purporting to be fact. That distracts people from real issues: they run all over the place chasing red herrings.

Oh. OH!

You said you were a member of Fianna Fail, didn't you?

Right. Got it now.

ForestFriends

I have to hand it to Leitrim Lad
For someone who's propping up the country's economy (single handed) s/he spends a lot of time posting on the board. e.g. March 24th 2:30 to 16:57 6 posts - it must have been a slack Tuesday afternoon.

Gumbo

ForestFriends wrote: »

I have to hand it to Leitrim Lad
For someone who's propping up the country's economy (single handed) s/he spends a lot of time posting on the board. e.g. March 24th 2:30 to 16:57 6 posts - it must have been a slack Tuesday afternoon.

he claims to be a construction sub-contractor with staff, imo he is a troll trying to ignite old unverivied arguments.

hobochris

I noticed a split in the views people take on this issue, There seems to be those that are looking to blame someone(i.e. this is your fault your a Fianna fail supporter, your a builder etc..) and those who are focused more so on how to fix it(regardless of who is to blame).. Imo its this bickering that gonna make things worse, as the country will get worse while we argue about it.

I noticed that the first view(looking for someone to blame) seems to be taken by public sector workers a lot more then private where the reverse can be said for the second view.

either way, unless EVERYONE cop's onto the fact that things will have to change for all of us to get out of this recession and that things may not be the same as they were before.. things will get even worse.

It doesn't matter how much crying etc the public sector do the fact remains they will have to take their share of the pain like the rest of us(who also "didn't cause this mess" yet were all happy to reap up any Benifit's(both public & private sector) we could get from the better times)...

If people fail to cooperate, then their is a good chance that very few will even have a job in the not so distant future for a long time to come,Even if some public sector people lose their jobs through the required changes their is a better chance that they will be able to find work sooner as a result, as public sector reform will help bring the costs in this country down, that In turn will make doing business here cheaper & more jobs will be created, Granted they may not be in the public sector where you have a job for life but at least its a job.

The government have very difficult choices to make(which might actually be for the long term good of country for a change), the more difficult things are made through protests etc... the more investor confidence is shaken, which in turn means that there is less chance of them investing money in our economy... which given that we are aiming towards a knowledge based economy that strives on foreign investment is like chopping of your nose to spite your face.

That's my view on things anyway..

joolsveer

Can the current economic situation be improved without finding out the causes and addressing them? I am not a public servant and I do not belong to a union. I am self employed and am noticing a reduction in business and a consequent loss of income at the moment.

stevoman

dresden8 wrote: »

Why you still in the lower grades? Interview FAIL?

once again bad attempt. read back through my old post. passed the exam for promotion with flying colours. passed the interview and made the panel. no promotions going ahead now though due to the FAIL in the economy.

joolsveer

stevoman wrote: »

once again bad attempt. read back through my old post. passed the exam for promotion with flying colours. passed the interview and made the panel. no promotions going ahead now though due to the FAIL in the economy.

Is that the Fianna FAIL?

jimmmy

joolsveer wrote: »

I am self employed and am noticing a reduction in business and a consequent loss of income at the moment.

Everyone is in the same boat who is self employed. I was talking to one fellow recently who is losing money, and lost the SSIA money + borrowing he pumped in to his little business in a vain effort to sustain himself a job.
If you still have some income you are one of the lucky ones.

hobochris

joolsveer wrote: »

Can the current economic situation be improved without finding out the causes and addressing them? I am not a public servant and I do not belong to a union. I am self employed and am noticing a reduction in business and a consequent loss of income at the moment.

we already know the causes, high public spending, high cost of living, over inflated salaries(across the board).

ALL salaries need to be brought down, In order to do this we need to bring the cost of living down. The status quo on salary expectations need to be revised so that people don't expect the same salaries as qualified/skilled people for the likes of glorified office admin positions, as has been the case in the past.

Salaries need to be relevant to the level of skill required for the job and demand for a particular skill while been kept in check with the minimum wage and the cost of living.

that way the country becomes more competitive(which is essential to attract investors) and the rewards are still there for people who strive to make themselves highly skilled in there fields. IMO someone who spent an additional 4 years in college upping their skill set should not be on par in terms of salary with someone with who just got a job after leaving school, as is the case with some fields.

leitrim lad

yip sarcasm and unions go well, lap top and broad band means i can stay on boards almost anywhere

but back to whats important things, i didnt waste millions on trips to nasa did i ,or do i leave a couple of thousand people purposely on trollies every day,

answer is no i dont
but the overpaid leeches in the public service do dont they how many more poor innocent women have to die because public sector workers diagnosed them wrong

o wait i suppose thats going to be blamed on fianna fail it should have been the politicians who diagnosed it not the waste of money that works in the public sector

ArphaRima

o wait i suppose thats going to be blamed on fianna fail it should have been the politicians who diagnosed it not the waste of money that works in the public sector

I honestly dont know why you're in a politics forum.

Fianna Fail run our government. They are the management of the HSE!! They control budgets. They control our taxes, they control the PS/CS wages. Everything you say is wrong with this country is because of the policies and mishandling of this country by the government. The government IS FIANNA FAIL.

grahamo

leitrim lad wrote: »

yip sarcasm and unions go well, lap top and broad band means i can stay on boards almost anywhere

but back to whats important things, i didnt waste millions on trips to nasa did i ,or do i leave a couple of thousand people purposely on trollies every day,

answer is no i dont
but the overpaid leeches in the public service do dont they how many more poor innocent women have to die because public sector workers diagnosed them wrong

o wait i suppose thats going to be blamed on fianna fail it should have been the politicians who diagnosed it not the waste of money that works in the public sector

Oh have a day off! Your scraping the barrel now looking for scapegoats. Most public sector workers, like private sector workers work hard and do a good job. Most are certainly not overpaid. As for calling them leeches, where do you get off? For me the leeches in this country are the tax fiddlers, the dole cheats and the many self employed who have been crying poor mouth to the taxman for every year of the recent boom claiming they are on the breadline and earn less than the minimum wage, mind you, most of them have holiday homes and pay for every round with €100 euro notes(Don't tell me this don't happen, We all know it does.)
As for all the whingeing about "But we create the wealth" The public sector facilitate and regulate development in the private sector, giving the private sector the opportunity to create wealth. Without this there would be no private sector wealth created. The roads and infrastructure, built and maintained by the public sector creates wealth, as well as this many parts of the public sector makes money which is enough to fund their own departments. Please get your facts straight.

CiaranC

grahamo wrote: »

The public sector facilitate and regulate development in the private sector, giving the private sector the opportunity to create wealth. Without this there would be no private sector wealth created.

What a load of rubbish.

Scofflaw

leitrim lad wrote: »

no need to get upset now

the truth is tough but some of these people dont understand what has already happened in the private sector ,and slowly but surely it is now coming to them

the point of a union stopping the already slow services to strike for no apparent reason is pointless and about as pointless as the union in the first place

leitrim_lad, next report I have of you trolling and you'll be out for a week.

moderately,
Scofflaw

grahamo

CiaranC wrote: »

What a load of rubbish.

So the many small businesses and entrepeneurs who started off with the help of IDA grants etc. and the many technology based firms who are helped out by places like forfas etc. aren't facilitated by the public sector?

jimmmy

grahamo wrote: »

Most are certainly not overpaid..

Wrong. Irish public sector workers are probably the highest paid public sector workers in the world.

grahamo wrote: »

For me the leeches in this country are the tax fiddlers, the dole cheats and the many self employed who have been crying poor mouth to the taxman for every year of the recent boom claiming they are on the breadline and earn less than the minimum wage, mind you, most of them have holiday homes and pay for every round with €100 euro notes(Don't tell me this don't happen, We all know it does.).

"most of them have holiday homes" ? Wrong. Most of the people I know who have holiday homes are public sector employees, hospital doctors , teachers, college lecturers etc etc

grahamo wrote: »

As for all the whingeing about "But we create the wealth" The public sector facilitate and regulate development in the private sector, giving the private sector the opportunity to create wealth. Without this there would be no private sector wealth created. The roads and infrastructure, built and maintained by the public sector creates wealth, as well as this many parts of the public sector makes money which is enough to fund their own departments. Please get your facts straight.

The public sector build roads, but the money has come from taxpayers, be it here or abroad. Please get your facts straight. The money the country earns does not come from the public sector.

jimmmy

grahamo wrote: »

So the many small businesses and entrepeneurs who started off with the help of IDA grants etc. and the many technology based firms who are helped out by places like forfas etc. aren't facilitated by the public sector?

Most businesses do not get IDA grants ; for that you must be in manufacturing. Even then I know some manufacturing businesses who do not get grants. Any grants got are but a fraction of projected tax yield.

grahamo

jimmmy wrote: »

Wrong. Irish public sector workers are probably the highest paid public sector workers in the world.

I f you say so! Maybe your thinking of judges, consultants etc. but your average joe in the public certainly isn't raking it in.

jimmmy wrote: »

"most of them have holiday homes" ? Wrong. Most of the people I know who have holiday homes are public sector employees, hospital doctors , teachers, college lecturers etc etc .

Of course the doctors, lecturers and professionals would be earning enough to afford holiday homes if they wanted one, but certainly not your average public sector worker. Most of the people I know who have holiday homes would be builders, self employed etc.etc.

jimmmy wrote: »

The public sector build roads, but the money has come from taxpayers, be it here or abroad. Please get your facts straight. The money the country earns does not come from the public sector.

I didn't say the money came from the public sector, I said the public sector facilitated the building of and maintained infrastructure. But while, I'm at it. The Public sector pay tax too.
BTW, before the "We pay your wages jibe" I work for a dept. that earns money to cover costs/salaries etc. so my tax, like private sector tax is REAL TAX:rolleyes::rolleyes:

thebman

jimmmy wrote: »

Wrong. Irish public sector workers are probably the highest paid public sector workers in the world.

Just to add to this point. We are almost all over paid given the current situation we find ourselves in.

leitrim lad

ya well guess what i was one of the so called highly paid private sector
contractors and i have never had a holiday in my life, i have been to the uk and germany but only to work
now struggling to keep working and get credit from banks, to fund wages and capital, and guess what not one public sector worker has this problem they dont have to worry about their pay cheqe bouncing next weejk neither
maybe when you stand back and look at it ,that is why people like me are so against the strikes and unions
if we are so well paid in the private sector then why is the high courts clogged with cases of smaller sized companies having to take bigger companies there just to get paid the money they worked for ,public sector workers dont have to wait months and in some cases years (decade) for their wages do they

Naz_st

grahamo wrote: »

Of course the doctors, lecturers and professionals would be earning enough to afford holiday homes if they wanted one, but certainly not your average public sector worker. Most of the people I know who have holiday homes would be builders, self employed etc.etc.

You're not comparing like with like, you can't compare the "average public sector worker" with a small subset of private sector workers. The "average private sector worker" doesn't have a holiday home either.

Also, it's indigenous entrepreneurs (the "self-employed") who take the highest risk of anyone (no job security, no "employment rights", risky revenue streams, often funded by their own savings initially, no entitlement to dole if their business fails) and ultimately they end up creating jobs in this country and are less likely than multi-nationals to feck off to lower employment cost countries at the drop of a hat. And you're advocating getting rid of all these "leeches"?

Bill Gates was a self-employed, lowly entrepreneur once too. As was Michael Dell and Google's Larry & Sergey. Yeah, we don't need those types around here! :rolleyes:

leitrim lad

thank you NAZ ST atleast someone is seeing sence rather than attempting to ban me for a week for stating the truth

public sector workers never suffer from the depression that is brought on by stress of not knowing will that cheqe clear on time to fund the next months wages ,and if it doesnt what will i tell the 10 employees who all have young families ,

or will i get paid for this contract or will it force all my hard work into liquidation

no they would rather strike over nothing

jimmmy

grahamo wrote: »

Maybe your thinking of judges, consultants etc. but your average joe in the public certainly isn't raking it in.

What I wrote was " Irish public sector workers are probably the highest paid public sector workers in the world.". I did not say anyone was raking it in or not as the case may be. Simply Irish public sector workers are probably the highest paid public sector workers in the world....from Siobhan the secretary to Nora the nurse to Gerry the Guard to Colm the consultant, compared to their counterparts even in the industrialised G7 countries like the UK, US and Germany.

grahamo wrote: »

Of course the doctors, lecturers and professionals would be earning enough to afford holiday homes if they wanted one, but certainly not your average public sector worker.

Correct. As I said, most of the people I know who have holiday homes ( and I know a lot ) are public sector employees, hospital doctors , teachers, college lecturers etc etc

grahamo wrote: »

I didn't say the money came from the public sector, I said the public sector facilitated the building of and maintained infrastructure. But while, I'm at it. The Public sector pay tax too.

I know you said " the public sector facilitated the building of and maintained infrastructure eg roads " ...well for the amount of tax they collect - not to mention handouts from EC structural fund - they would want to, would'nt they ? What I said was the money has come from taxpayers. The income tax most govt employees pay is just giving back with one hand some of the larger amount the govt has given to them in their other hand....this has come from the wealth producing sector.
The money the country earns does not come from the public sector.

thebman

jimmmy wrote: »

I know you said " the public sector facilitated the building of and maintained infrastructure eg roads " ...well for the amount of tax they collect - not to mention handouts from EC structural fund - they would want to, would'nt they ? What I said was the money has come from taxpayers. The income tax most govt employees pay is just giving back with one hand some of the larger amount the govt has given to them in their other hand....this has come from the wealth producing sector.
The money the country earns does not come from the public sector.

Just adding to this point, some of the public services makes money. Posters have said it here and I have no doubt that it is true. Now my question is if they are making a profit, why is the service not privatised? The government isn't supposed to be profit making. It is supposed to run for the publics interest which is to break even with a balanced budget (which obviously isn't possible). The governments money is supposed to come from tax not profitable services.

It seems that if we can privatise something in the public sector, we should at the moment to reduce costs of these services by having competition and the competition will employ more people who will pay tax as will the businesses etc... Most of these services I imagine are for businesses. If the government is making a profit on a service they provide to business, that is a bad thing. They are making it more expensive than it needs to be to do business here by doing this.

grahamo

Naz_st wrote: »

You're not comparing like with like, you can't compare the "average public sector worker" with a small subset of private sector workers. The "average private sector worker" doesn't have a holiday home either. :

But its OK for the anti public sector ranters to "not compare like with like" by comparing ordinary workers in the public sector to members of quangoes etc.

Naz_st wrote: »

Also, it's indigenous entrepreneurs (the "self-employed") who take the highest risk of anyone (no job security, no "employment rights", risky revenue streams, often funded by their own savings initially, no entitlement to dole if their business fails) and ultimately they end up creating jobs in this country and are less likely than multi-nationals to feck off to lower employment cost countries at the drop of a hat. And you're advocating getting rid of all these "leeches"?

Bill Gates was a self-employed, lowly entrepreneur once too. As was Michael Dell and Google's Larry & Sergey. Yeah, we don't need those types around here! :rolleyes:

If you read my post I said the leeches were the tax fiddlers and dole cheats,
not specifically the self employed. I do know lads who are self employed that declare less earnings for tax than they actually earn, Why aren't people getting on their backs?