Some Questions for The Public Sector Bashers

future_plans

Think outside the box....Teachers working longer hours or fewer holidays wouldn't necessarily mean more schooling.....For example, how much of the governments budget goes on Child care supplement/assistance for example? Just to mind children between the hours of 3 and 6? Or over the long Summer while parents work? Again, just an example. Any change in process needs to be radical and workable to make a dent in the deficit.

Radical changes are required across the board. We've been making such changes in work practices over the last couple of years as we have had to in order to maintain our competitiveness...I normally for example work over a 50 hour week when I'm only paid and contracted to work 40. Its something we just have to do to fight for our survival and demonstrate our value to the rest of the global corporation.

whatwaytovote

I bought my first house for £56000. I had a first time buyers grant of £3000. The grant which was supposed to aid or encourage first time buyers to invest in a house was swallowed up by a similar rise in house prices. As potential buyers saught wage rises to counter the most recent rise in house prices, the auctioneers and property speculators pushed their prices up. The public sector started to look at what was happening. They could not afford to keep up with the rise in house prices and so asked their union to negotiate for them. Benchmarking! Benchmarking was designed to help the Garda, Nurse, and other civil service employees to buy their first house. The predatory nature of business people on this island or maybe every island saw them putting prices up to net some of this income. Not happy with selling more to a rising population, they saught to increase their proffit margin. We ended up paying excessive prices for something available on the european mainland and the UK at a considerably cheaper price. So here we are now. The building boom is over. We have a decreased income and we are borrowing to stay afloat. We want someone to blame. We cannot seem to get satisfaction. The Government were given your mandate to lead and by god they are going to try and dig themselves and some of their cronies out no matter what the cost. After all you can struggle by on that pension in Europe if needs be. NAMA! That is how we will bail out the banks. Price Hikes in insurance on some increased claims pretext is what we will be done to get rid of some of the losses of the insurance companys. What about the rest of the business sector? The wifes Merc still has to be changed, the golf, the holidays. They all have to be payed for. Thats easy, just cut staff, then pay, then make the ones that are left work harder after all they are lucky to have a job. (WHO SAYS SO? The papers, the radio presenters. THATS WHO! The papers are the last bastion of unbiased reporting. At least you can rely on a hungry journalist or reporter to go looking for the truth. Hungry! They dont look to hungry to me. Investagative Journalisim! Do you remember the concept. A journalist driven by a desire to get to the truth, probed a news worthy item from all sides. Anyway the journalist is no longer as independent as he would have us believe. His office is supplied by media mogul he works for. The same mogul that owns the phone company, the insurance company, the radio station, he even owns their opinion, after all they ARE on the payroll.) How do we bring prices back in line with our EU counterparts. We can regulate the public sector but the private has proven to be too influenced by profit to regulate itself. We have to take the money out of the economy by increasing income tax for all and reducing Vat. Retailers will be forced to reduce prices. The cost of living should go down. Some retailers will be lost as they struggle with their landlords to reduce rents but the landlords will eventually reduce rent also. It's happening in the housing market. A retailer can no longer expect to make the profit margin he once did. Is it cheaper to support a failing farmer with grants who declared that they have only earned an income of 8000euro per annum? Wouldent it be cheaper to put him on the dole and rent his land to a bigger farmer that finds it cost effective to work the land for a profit.

ardmacha

That way the country can get by with less teachers, save the country money while still meeting the country's educational requirements.

Since class sizes are bigger than other places, teachers are already more productive than the International average. I am not sure how you are going to make do with less of them. Do you plan to teach students in shifts?

dresden8

future_plans wrote: »

Well said Mace face. Lets hope the Unions and Dept of Finance are doing more than just slinging URLs of newspaper reports at each other.

Indeed, heaven forbid somebody would introduce facts into the debate.

Carry on bashing.

irish_bob

Riskymove wrote: »

exactly

the majority of the public service work in health and education...

the majority of people employed by the HSE are beauracrats

SkepticOne

ardmacha wrote: »

Since class sizes are bigger than other places, teachers are already more productive than the International average. I am not sure how you are going to make do with less of them. Do you plan to teach students in shifts?

The most obvious way would be to shorten the holiday entitlement thereby creating more working hours for the same amount of pay per teacher. It would be better, of course, if the reduced amount of money could be shared among the same number of teachers without increasing the workload of individual teachers, but I don't think reducing the amount of teaching done in the country is an option that should be considered.

ardmacha

The most obvious way would be to shorten the holiday entitlement thereby creating more working hours for the same amount of pay per teacher.

And that will reduce the deficit how, exactly?

SkepticOne

ardmacha wrote: »

And that will reduce the deficit how, exactly?

Reduction in wage bill.

Riskymove

irish_bob wrote: »

the majority of people employed by the HSE are beauracrats

link?

source?

evidence?


anything?

Riskymove

SkepticOne wrote: »

Reduction in wage bill.

how does the bill reduce if the pay remains the same?

kaymin

dresden8 wrote: »

Here's more.
Originally Posted by kaymin
'Just over a fifth of employers have implemented pay reductions'



Which means nearly 80% have not.

http://www.ibec.ie/IBEC/Press/PressPublicationsdoclib3.nsf/vPages/Newsroom~new-ibec-survey-on-pay-trends-in-the-economy-15-09-2009?OpenDocument

This was gone over earlier. You really should pay more attention.

Dresden,

I was the person to post that particular statistic. However, I also included a number of other statistics that you have chosen to ignore because they don't serve your argument. The point I was trying to make with my post is that, taking account of redundancies, reduced working hours and pay cuts, the pain felt in the private sector through all of these measures greatly exceeds that suffered in the public sector.

Reducing wage rates in the public sector to their private sector equivalents (i.e. a 20 - 26% reduction depending on whose statistics you use) is a minimum measure that should be taken. Further reductions are warranted to take account of better pensions and job security.

SkepticOne

Riskymove wrote: »

how does the bill reduce if the pay remains the same?

Since individual teachers would be doing more for the same pay you would not need as many of them.

dresden8

kaymin wrote: »

Dresden,

I was the person to post that particular statistic. However, I also included a number of other statistics that you have chosen to ignore because they don't serve your argument. The point I was trying to make with my post is that, taking account of redundancies, reduced working hours and pay cuts, the pain felt in the private sector through all of these measures greatly exceeds that suffered in the public sector.

Reducing wage rates in the public sector to their private sector equivalents (i.e. a 20 - 26% reduction depending on whose statistics you use) is a minimum measure that should be taken. Further reductions are warranted to take account of better pensions and job security.

Not all the private sector has been made redundant, not all have reduced working hours and not all have taken paycuts. Some are getting pay increases.

Some people are having a good recession.

I don't think I invented ignoring facts and statistics. Not around here anyway.

kaymin

dresden8 wrote: »

Not all the private sector has been made redundant, not all have reduced working hours and not all have taken paycuts. Some are getting pay increases.

Some people are having a good recession.

I don't think I invented ignoring facts and statistics. Not around here anyway.

That's not what I said though. Think of my post in terms of the average worker.

ardmacha

Since individual teachers would be doing more for the same pay you would not need as many of them.

So you mean increase the class size, beyond the increase that has already taken place?

irish_bob

dresden8 wrote: »

Not all the private sector has been made redundant, not all have reduced working hours and not all have taken paycuts. Some are getting pay increases.

Some people are having a good recession.

I don't think I invented ignoring facts and statistics. Not around here anyway.

the whole of the public sector is employed by one entity , the private sector is not so it is a fallacy to speak in terms of not everyone in the private sector having taken a pay cut , it is a wholey dishonest comparrison

NewDubliner

irish_bob wrote: »

the private sector is not so it is a fallacy to speak in terms of not everyone in the private sector having taken a pay cut , it is a wholey dishonest comparrison

Yet the public-sector bashers claim to speak as one voice for the private sector and don't identify which private sector entity they represent.

ardmacha

so it is a fallacy to speak in terms of not everyone in the private sector having taken a pay cut

It is not a fallacy. Not all people in private sector have taken a pay cut.
Can we deal with facts please.

dresden8

irish_bob wrote: »

the whole of the public sector is employed by one entity , the private sector is not so it is a fallacy to speak in terms of not everyone in the private sector having taken a pay cut , it is a wholey dishonest comparrison

I didn't start that comparison.

dresden8

kaymin wrote: »

That's not what I said though. Think of my post in terms of the average worker.

Which average worker is this? The redundant one? The one with the paycut? The one with the payrise and rather nice bonus?

irish_bob

NewDubliner wrote: »

Yet the public-sector bashers claim to speak as one voice for the private sector and don't identify which private sector entity they represent.

so you want them to make clear they work for eddies hardware in drogheda or mc cabes toyota garrage in ardee , is that it

irish_bob

ardmacha wrote: »

It is not a fallacy. Not all people in private sector have taken a pay cut.
Can we deal with facts please.

it is a fallacsious comparison , everyone in the ps works for the same employer so of course their was an across the board collective pay cut , thier are thousands of employers in the private sector , do you expect them all to have in tandem enforced pay cuts on thier employees regardless of individual profit margins and balance sheets , what a redicolous arguement , one that could only spew from some union indoctrinated clone

irish_bob

dresden8 wrote: »

I didn't start that comparison.

no , your union did but you like the good indoctrinated clone that you are have been on Q to recycle the message at all times

Count Dooku

dresden8 wrote: »

Which average worker is this? The redundant one? The one with the paycut? The one with the payrise and rather nice bonus?

Long time ago public sector decided that PS staff must earn as following staff in private sector
Report of the Public Service Benchmarking Body

Having regard to its terms of reference, the Body decided that the sample of private sector companies should be broadly reflective of the economy based on the criteria of company size (numbers of employees), geographical and sectoral spread. It also decided that a large sample size would be necessary to meet these criteria. The Body identified the main sectors of the economy in the private sector from CSO data,3 namely: manufacturing; distribution and services; financial services; and construction. In turn, these sectors were broken down into NACE subsectors. Within each of these sub-sectors, and again from the CSO data, the required number of firms in each sub-sector was specified by company size.

I think that this methodology must be used again. We need to take exactly the same staff in private sector, which have been used to collect data last time, including those who are on dole, and do benchmarking again

mikemac

manufacturing; distribution and services; financial services; and construction.

lol, they certainly selected the sectors that have been badly hit
Yes, I know someone is going to mention 3.5% for some banking staff....

Benchmarking is still in force right? It was accepted by most of the social partners for the last few years so I suppose everyone will accept the next round, right? What do you mean it only works one way? :eek:
I wonder when the next round of benchmarking begins

P. Breathnach

Count Dooku wrote: »

Long time ago public sector decided that PS staff must earn as following staff in private sector
Report of the Public Service Benchmarking Body



I think that this methodology must be used again. We need to take exactly the same staff in private sector, which have been used to collect data last time, including those who are on dole, and do benchmarking again

A new round of benchmarking is a reasonable proposition. The inclusion of those who are on the dole is daft.

Count Dooku

P. Breathnach wrote: »

The inclusion of those who are on the dole is daft.

How many civil servants on permanent positions lost their jobs? AFAIK only staff from temporary positions have laid off. In private sector it was not much difference – most Dell staff were on permanent positions
Everything must be equal

kaymin

dresden8 wrote: »

Which average worker is this? The redundant one? The one with the paycut? The one with the payrise and rather nice bonus?

Do you not understand average?

irish_bob

Count Dooku wrote: »

How many civil servants on permanent positions lost their jobs? AFAIK only staff from temporary positions have laid off. In private sector it was not much difference – most Dell staff were on permanent positions
Everything must be equal

the planning section of each local authority must be the most bone idle spot in the country right now yet has anyone heard of a single lay off

SkepticOne

ardmacha wrote: »

So you mean increase the class size, beyond the increase that has already taken place?

No, I don't think it implies that. The school day would have to be shorter but the school year would be longer.