Public sector pay: the wrong debate

asdasd

I think that the Public Sector has been very mature so far, in this debate. Of course the Unions are going to be tough in Public.

Yittisay

Our spending on public secto is simply too high by any standards. People frequently quote a recent OECD report that says our proportion of GDP spents on public secotr is low but that report doesn't point out that by any standards, we spend little or no money on defence whereas in most developed countries it is a huge &age of spending. If one was to take that into account & compare it to the more appropriate GNP (GDP inc profits multinationals & IFSC entities earn here & expatriate home whereas GNP doesn't) then our spending is v v high.

As pointed out in an earlier post, the vibrancy of an economy is dependant on private sector ventures as they create employment in the private sector which in turn creates need for public sector services & employment. I'm not for a second suggesting that public sector is not vital because it clearly it, but it is a net cost to country, you cannot have a financially healthy economy without healthy private sector job creation, and to do that uyou have to incentivise people to start businesses etc. I am a self employed worker with tough hours no job security and have to fund and manage my own pension. What has been going through my mind of late is am I supposed to convince my kids to work in private sector when info clearly shows them that public sector workers:

- have job security
- work shorter hours
- have better terms of employment
- have guaranteed pension (which financially is not workable because you cannot guarantee financial returns over any period let alone 40yrs. And in relation to Levy, as a private sector worker i think that has been put across baldy - yer contributing to yer own pensions just like i do)

We will find it difficult to convince the best prospects from future generations to go out there and start a business, run with that idea because the alternative is much safer and better paid. Fundamentally that is a huge problem that has to be addressed & in times like these cutting pay & penions in public sector only way to go

the_syco

Kama wrote: »

That being said, I'm fully in support of wage cuts at the managerial end; as an ex-PS worker the 'Indian' ratio is too low. But the overpaid wages of managerials are emergent from mapping to...you guessed it, inflated managerial costs in the private sector, which have been INCREASING even during the current economic decline:

You compare management with "all public sector employees". Christ on a f**king bicycle. Call me cynical, but how about you compare "all public sector employees" to "all manufacturing employees". It'll be a hard figure to get, as lots of those who work in manufacturing will have probably got the sack.

gerry28 wrote: »

We are a society - I answer to the government and so do you.

Actually, I don't answer to the government.

Darragh29

optocynic wrote: »

In principal, I agree with you..
But I have been working in the corporate world for more than a little bit.. and I know that there are several types of workers.. and here in Ireland... we have lots of malcontents.

So, you were dismissed from this multinational? Can I ask the industry/sector you were in?

I don't want to get into identifying my employer, as I've moved on from the situation now and found closure on the matter, but this was a situation I endured for no less than 6 years, so the suggestion that I was just in this place for a "little bit", is not correct I'm afraid.

My situation led me to take legal action which ultimately resulted in me leaving my position of employment by mutual agreement. Read into that what you will.

As I said, I don't want to focus too much on my own past, but in relation to the current discussion, my experience has been that if you try to stand up to some of these organisations, you are shot down. I was basically a whistleblower and ended up having to leave my job over it.

I'm not arguing that the polar opposite of my situation, which to my mind would be a highly unionised workplace where people cannot have meetings unless a shop steward is present, is the way forward either.

Somewhere in the middle, I'm fully convinced that there must be a solution that can work on the basis of a new model of engagement, where the needs of employers and employees can be fully met and indeed surpassed.

I know in the organisation I used to work for, their unique employee-employer model did not work. It did not work for the company and it did not work for the employee. It worked for some employees who financially engrained themselves to the detriment of the company. The same must be true for public sector workplaces, how on earth that could be said to be successful is beyond me.

The solution we need I think has not been found yet...

podge018

to all the private sector workers moaning about how good the public sector have it - what are you still doing in the private sector?!?! There was plenty of jobs going in the public sector for the last 10 years, guards, clerical officers, local authority jobs etc. Maybe you didn't want to leave your Celtic tiger inflated private sector job for some reason. Hmmmmmm.

Yittisay

Podge, that's the whole point - you can't have a situation where people all want to be in public sector, there has to be an incentive there to take the risk & go the private sector. Exchequer needs tax revuene to pay public sector wages

asdasd

Maybe you didn't want to leave your Celtic tiger inflated private sector job for some reason. Hmmmmmm.

Maybe we find moving jobs, country and working for small companies/ startups etc. more exciting than the job for life with the same people for ever and ever and ever....

And as the previous poster mentioned - we cant all work for the government.

Lockstep

murphaph wrote: »

Anyone who thinks Ireland is a low-cost/low wage economy needs their head examined. Come to Germany-NO MINIMUM WAGE at all here! People work for €400 a month and it's legal. Not moral IMO, but legal! And this is a perceived "high cost economy".

In Germany when your year I unemployment benefit runs out you step down to ALGII (€351 oer month plus rent paid in a SMALL apartment for a single person). That's all you get.

Your ignoring that Germany long ago came to a social partnership scheme; the unions and employers hammered out sensible agreements, with the powerful unions ensuring that their members had wages based on the job. The problem being that a two tier labour market came about; unionised, well represented and well paid German workers and predominantly low-waged and disorganised migrant workers.

Germany was also the pioneer of the welfare state and has higher taxes than we have.

irish_bob

Wiley1 wrote: »

Exactly, I have said this to many posts, Why don't we shut down the public sector for a week, save billions but sure hey don't worry about the country imploding in a week without public services. Water, Roads, Trains, Buses, Hospitals, Gardai....

Many loss making public sector services still have to operate...Look further than cutting wages...surely we're more adaptable than this...

Every post I read about this subject increases my view that it has now turned into Public V Private sector....

It's Divide and conquer that allowed Britain to own the world...We're too busy arguing with eachother than to confront the real causes of this problem.

the divide and conquer mantra is an invention of the unions , being the obedient sheep that they are , every single ps worker seems to parrot this line , that and

WE DIDNT CAUSE THIS MESS
PRIVATE SECTOR CREAMED IT DURING THE BOOM
DONT BELIEVE WHAT YOU READ IN THE SINDO

like clones to the last man and woman , they all come out with the same jargon

NewDubliner

irish_bob wrote: »

like clones to the last man and woman , they all come out with the same jargon

Do you absolve the banks and property developers & trust the SINDO?

taidghbaby

Davidth88 wrote: »

Thats an odd OP . If we ( I work in the private sector for a mutli national ) did as the OP suggests , my employer would just say goodbye and move to Poland or India .

As for public sector pay, well I certainly feel the benchmarking process did no one any favours , what exactly was it benchmarked against ? ( thats a secret more closely guarded than the formula to Coca Cola ).

maybe we should outsource the public service to India then?

irish_bob

NewDubliner wrote: »

Do you absolve the banks and property developers & trust the SINDO?

the banks were let engage in reckless lending by a financial regulator who done a rip van winkle and the property developers were in league with fianna fail , our economic mess is compouned by the fact that outrageous pay rises and wellfare increases were awarded which were only made possible by a once off source of revenue which is now gone , all our present problems stem from failings by the state at various levels

NewDubliner

irish_bob wrote: »

all our present problems stem from failings by the state at various levels

And the banks and property developers are not to blame at all (someone should have stopped them) and everyone one else should pay to bail them out...ok, I see where you're coming from.

irish_bob

NewDubliner wrote: »

And the banks and property developers are not to blame at all (someone should have stopped them) and everyone one else should pay to bail them out...ok, I see where you're coming from.

i agree that someone should have halted thier gallop , the financial regulator re the banks and the politicians re the developers , anyway , the ps have done well out of developers , without the exploits of developers , our ps would never have claimed the title of europes highest paid state sector , you guys had a good run

NewDubliner

irish_bob wrote: »

ithe ps have done well out of developers , without the exploits of developers ,

And who profited the most?

Yittisay

Around the beginning of decade when anyone with IT skills was getting great pay the public sector unions negociated huge pay raises for members - in the middle of the decade when financing was effectively free for banks & the world was enjoying a false boom based on outragoues lending of this free money, the unions again got huge pay increases for their members. Now that the tide has turned they have to come down with the rest of the broader economy.

I think that cutting head count is the more sensible option but reckon public sector redundancies will be so expensive as to prohibit this option. Either way spendng has to come down, it just has to, we cannot run deficits like this.

Hiking tax rates across the board even more will disencourage people from getting out there and starting business ventures, the very type of action that is needed to get us out of this mess. Reliance on foreign banks & multinationals has been shown to be dangerous so we have to create a spirit of entrepreneurship in this country so that future generations are employed by irish companies.

Kama

the_syco wrote:

You compare management with "all public sector employees". Christ on a f**king bicycle.

My point was that the whole wage restraint concept seems to be quite selectively applied, especially as these rises in managerial pay are taking place simultaneous with a: recession, b: shedding jobs and lowered wages for the non-managerial, and c: an increasing total wage bill. Which, to my mind, stinks somewhat hypocritical.

Call me cynical, but how about you compare "all public sector employees" to "all manufacturing employees". It'll be a hard figure to get, as lots of those who work in manufacturing will have probably got the sack.

Ask and ye shall receive...



Now where it gets interesting is when its broken down by size of enterprise:



So, compared to large organizations the civil servants are paid less, but comparable, and the real thing to notice is employees of small business get...kinda screwed in comparison to both their public and private counterparts.

brianthebard

murphaph wrote: »

Having said earlier than people can often work for very low wages here, people with real skills and qualifications to back them up are generally well paid. It's quite a fair system-if you make an effort to educate yourself you will be alright. if you don't, you'll get a menial job for low money. In Ireland people with low/zero qualifications still thought themselves entitled to a 3 bed semi and new car. It doesn't add up.

Yet again you make a statement with no real thought behind it. The system you are praising is actually not that fair at all; http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/21/germany-now-education this article explains how pupils are sectioned off after primary school and their ability to progress in German society is decided for them. Thus the german education system itself has contributed to the unemployment issues. I have also read articles (can't find links atm) that stated that the lengthy time it takes people in germany to graduate from university have become a barrier to employment. So the reality of german education turns out to be in conflict with your 'fair system'.

Overheal

Speaking of Other European countries, with their great worker pay and perks - Look at Germany. Is their stuff cheap? Hhhhhell No. Its ludicrously expensive. Italy? same thing. I'm of course talking about Motors here, but I would imagine it applies to the whole philosophy. They go for Top Quality goods. Or they go for cheap as one earlier poster said - no minimum wage, makes cheap domestic goods. looks great on the profit and loss for the annual budget. But if you work at BMW you make great pay, great benefits, because you have a great degree or great experience behind you and you make a great product with a high cost and an even higher markup. with a high level of reputation.

Then you look at china, see piss-barrell-bottom worker conditions and low everyday prices (thanks walmart!) And huge, huge volumes.

Tell me, which one of these categories does Ireland fit into? Outside of Guiness and the odd dairy product its hard to think of anything Genuinely Irish that makes it competitive. You want to be treated like EU-15, but you don't produce like EU-15 either. Admit it to yourselves or prove me wrong. And don't say computer chips because that ship hath sailed.

asdasd

Tell me, which one of these categories does Ireland fit into? Outside of Guiness and the odd dairy product its hard to think of anything Genuinely Irish that makes it competitive.

As we already pointed out a lot of Irish produced good is from FDI. A lot of it is very high quality.

Lockstep

brianthebard wrote: »

Yet again you make a statement with no real thought behind it. The system you are praising is actually not that fair at all; http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/21/germany-now-education this article explains how pupils are sectioned off after primary school and their ability to progress in German society is decided for them. Thus the german education system itself has contributed to the unemployment issues. I have also read articles (can't find links atm) that stated that the lengthy time it takes people in germany to graduate from university have become a barrier to employment. So the reality of german education turns out to be in conflict with your 'fair system'.

In addition to this, their lengthy secondary school and national service means it takes them longer to get in on the jobs market.

asdasd

I liked the first comment on the education in Germany piece:

You should do what we did.

Scrap the Realschule and the Gymnasium and turn every school into a Hauptschule.

Worked wonders for our education system.

Overheal

asdasd wrote: »

As we already pointed out a lot of Irish produced good is from FDI. A lot of it is very high quality.

...No its not. Most of your FDI is pulling out because (shocker) your workforce is no longer competitive. Read into that what you will. Besides Call centres and Intel what else you have?

asdasd

.No its not. Most of your FDI is pulling out because (shocker) your workforce is no longer competitive. Read into that what you will.

Most is a bit over the top. I can think of Dell. Plenty of FDI in Ireland has been here for a generation - Apple for more than the existance of the Apple mac, for instance. I really dont see the rush out the door. Facebook is moving in. Amazon and Google are solid ( both European HQ). Dell is the cheap option, by the way, compared to Apple's premium and better quality stuff.

The recession is not really hitting that stuff very hard, if at all. Our unemplyment increase is from construction, and retail.

Darragh29

Here's one of the main problems folks:

Public sector and semi state employees: Highly unionised.

Private sector employees: Not unionised.

This is where a lot of the problem is now... If I'm a private sector worker now, I'm expected to do the work of two people. I've a mate who works for a building firm, 2 years ago, his office was full of people, now he's the only person in the office, and the office is still running away and he is doing the job of 5 people. He is working 12 hour days, 5 days a week, but he has a contract to work a 39 hour week! No overtime, either he gets through the work or he faces being replaced.

I'm not sure the same is happening in the public sector to be honest. We haev this huge massive gap now between the flexbility being expected of the private sector worker his/her fluid terms & conditions at the moment, and what is happening in the private sector, where things like overtime are just automatically paid out.

I know in the public sector, people might feel like they have it hard but as far as I know, nobody is doing hours for free in the public sector. I've mates who are working for well under th eminimum wage when you look at their weekly salary and divide it by the hours worked for that week, and they dare not ask for overtime because they are just glad to have a job at the moment.

If the same hardship is going on in the public sector, I'd love to hear about it....

potlatch

Isn't it apalling that people have to work under such awful conditions? If only something could be done about it.

Darragh29

potlatch wrote: »

Isn't it apalling that people have to work under such awful conditions? If only something could be done about it.

I don't think the crime here is that there are some people who are working in difficult conditions, I think it is that there are two groups here, private sector workers and public sector workers and one of those groups appears to be completely and utterly insulated from the non-pay end of the economic calamity we are experiencing, by virtue of strong union membership.

potlatch

It's perfectly conceivable to have reform at both ends. The question we need to ask ourselves, as a society and republic, is what kind of country do we want to live in?

It's my view that, in terms of pay and conditions, government should ensure the private sector resembles the public sector and not vice versa.

This means we all need to think outside the box in terms of what is right, not what is in one or another group's immediate interests: employers wanting to slash employee wages (while keeping more of the dosh for themselves) and public service workers (and especially management and senior grades) obstructing necessary change in service of the greater good*.

Even Adam Smith, the supposed godfather of neoliberal economics, talked of the necessity of 'moral sentiment' to balance the detrimental effects of the 'invisible hand'.

*I do, however, believe that there are many well-motivated public service workers.

Darragh29

potlatch wrote: »

It's perfectly conceivable to have reform at both ends. The question we need to ask ourselves, as a society and republic, is what kind of country do we want to live in?

It's my view that, in terms of pay and conditions, government should ensure the private sector resembles the public sector and not vice versa.

This means we all need to think outside the box in terms of what is right, not what is in one or another group's immediate interests: employers wanting to slash employee wages (while keeping more of the dosh for themselves) and public service workers (and especially management and senior grades) obstructing necessary change in service of the greater good*.

Even Adam Smith, the supposed godfather of neoliberal economics, talked of the necessity of 'moral sentiment' to balance the detrimental effects of the 'invisible hand'.

*I do, however, believe that there are many well-motivated public service workers.

But why make any distinction at all between the two groups, ideally I feel there should be none.

The problem arises in the first instance because you have a highly unionised public sector, and in the private sector where a lot of new jobs have been created recently, you have businesses that refuse to allow workers engage fully with a union in respect of their employment.

Many private sector workers do not want to be in a union as it is often seen as a shelter for the unproductive.

I think unions are more a part the problem and not the answer.

FlutterinBantam

Darragh29 wrote: »

But why make any distinction at all between the two groups, ideally I feel there should be none.

The problem arises in the first instance because you have a highly unionised public sector, and in the private sector where a lot of new jobs have been created recently, you have businesses that refuse to allow workers engage fully with a union in respect of their employment.

Many private sector workers do not want to be in a union as it is often seen as a shelter for the unproductive.

I think unions are more a part the problem and not the answer.

Wouldn't agree there.

The realproblem is that the State have to borrow €400 mill a week to keep the public service that we have now running.

The public service and the unions per se are not really the problem, it's the COST to keep them at current levels.

This level of borrowing cannot go on much longer,and urgent remedial steps to eliminate that gap over time is absolutely neccessary,now THAT'S where the Unions could be a problem.