Unions and their role in the economy

Taxipete29

Brigantes wrote: »

You're mistaken. The Unions are refusing further pay cuts.

If you were faced with a 7% pay cut... followed by threats of another pay cut in the same year, would you lie back and think of Ireland? Or would you become 'obsessed with pay' too?

Your mistaken im afraid and this is where the union argument falls down in my opinion. They are refusing cuts in Basic pay. They are not refusing cuts in allowances which they know will have to happen. The principle is the same. Take home pay for PS workers will be reduced. This blows their argument about deflationary pressures out of the water because they will still happen.

Why threaten strike action if the net effect will be the same? I have a feeling that union members have been misled into thinking that they can escape will little or no take home pay cuts when the opposite is actually true. These pay cuts in whatever form they take will happen and all the unions are doing is turning people against them by taking a hardline negative approach in the public eye. If they were more honest and said we accept that cuts are neccessary and we will negotiate to insure they are in the right places and take the right form then maybe the public would support them.
Its poor tactics imo.

Taxipete29

Brigantes wrote: »

Oh, but I thought most public sector workers earned in excess of 50kpa? Isn't that what the braying public is led to believe?

Also, your maths doesn't add up. How does an increment of 3% followed by a pay cut of 6% equate to a 3% pay rise?

100 + 3% = 103
103 - 6% = 96.82

(Inflation has been as near as 0% this year to be meaningless.)

Unions are sacrificing public services? LOL How so? By demanding Government engage in dialogue rather than insist on draconian, knee-jerk politics?

I thought deflation was about 5-6% this year? Am I wrong here??

OMD

Brigantes wrote: »

Oh, but I thought most public sector workers earned in excess of 50kpa? Isn't that what the braying public is led to believe?

2/3 public sector workers earn more than 40K a year I know that.

Brigantes wrote: »

Also, your maths doesn't add up. How does an increment of 3% followed by a pay cut of 6% equate to a 3% pay rise?

100 + 3% = 103
103 - 6% = 96.82

As I said after inflation (or in this case deflation)

Brigantes wrote: »

(Inflation has been as near as 0% this year to be meaningless.)

Sorry I am talking about Ireland here. What country are you talking about?

Brigantes wrote: »

Unions are sacrificing public services? LOL How so? By demanding Government engage in dialogue rather than insist on draconian, knee-jerk politics?

As I said either numbers employed or salaries will have to be cut. Cutting staff will worsen services.

Brigantes

irish_bob wrote: »

to those who are lending ireland several hundred million a week , it is entirely irrelevant who caused the mess , cutting current spending ( and that includes wages ) is a key part of stabalising the public finances

A valid point. Who will pay the pound of flesh? Certainly not the people responsible, that's for sure.

So why does "stabilising the public finances" mean ignoring the organisational and structural faults inherent in the public sector, and ignoring the Government's blind-eye to the follies and playthings of numerous Ministers and their coterie (e.g. HSE, FAS, etc) ? Easy. We have the chance here to completely reorganise the way we operate our public sector, providing value for money and customer focus, but doing that would signify the whole bloody setup was a mess to start with and FF's fault. Easier to just hack the pay and pension of the ordinary people who provide these services, and cut budgets for these services so ordinary people who use them suffer and then we can all pretend there's some kind of political leadership at the helm.

OMD

Brigantes wrote: »

A valid point. Who will pay the pound of flesh? Certainly not the people responsible, that's for sure.

So why does "stabilising the public finances" mean ignoring the organisational and structural faults inherent in the public sector, and ignoring the Government's blind-eye to the follies and playthings of numerous Ministers and their coterie (e.g. HSE, FAS, etc) ? Easy. We have the chance here to completely reorganise the way we operate our public sector, providing value for money and customer focus, but doing that would signify the whole bloody setup was a mess to start with and FF's fault. Easier to just hack the pay and pension of the ordinary people who provide these services, and cut budgets for these services so ordinary people who use them suffer and then we can all pretend there's some kind of political leadership at the helm.

All these things need to be done as well. We need cuts of over 20 billion. Cut all the TDs, quangos etc you want. Become more efficient, cut waste yes but It wont be enough. We really need 50% cuts to public service either in pay or staff. Now obviously this cannot be done but some cuts are essential.

Brigantes

Taxipete29 wrote: »

I thought deflation was about 5-6% this year? Am I wrong here??

I don't know. The figures I used were from January to July, admittedly, but I can't find figures for the 2nd half of this year. Where are you getting -5% inflation figures from?

OMD

Brigantes wrote: »

I don't know. The figures I used were from January to July, admittedly, but I can't find figures for the 2nd half of this year. Where are you getting -5% inflation figures from?

Rate is 6.5% deflation.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2009/1009/1224256258198.html

smokingman

Never been part of a union and never will.
I work in the private sector and if any crap was dealt to me from above, I got on with it, worked harder and left every evening knowing I had done a good days work. I see Unions as only useful to those who want a free ride and don't really have any idea of what a hard days work entails.

The likes of Siptu in AerLingus a few years ago when my other half was working there turned me even more against them. The people involved were only ever out for their own union career and the more shouting they did, the higher up in the union they got; even when their shouting was in no way representative of the employees sentiments.

Brigantes

OMD wrote: »

Rate is 6.5% deflation.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2009/1009/1224256258198.html

Thanks. I stand corrected. Yet are things so bad that people will argue that a 7% public sector pay cut equates to a 3% pay rise in the current climate?*


*Rhetorical question.

Brigantes

OMD wrote: »

All these things need to be done as well. We need cuts of over 20 billion. Cut all the TDs, quangos etc you want. Become more efficient, cut waste yes but It wont be enough. We really need 50% cuts to public service either in pay or staff. Now obviously this cannot be done but some cuts are essential.

So, essentially the only solution to the problem is put more people on the dole?

50% pay cuts? LOL The public sector lowest scale is from €24,000 to €39,000 (after 15 year's service). You seriously propose employing front-line staff on a wage of €19,000 after 15 year's service in the same job?

OMD

Brigantes wrote: »

So, essentially the only solution to the problem is put more people on the dole?

50% pay cuts? LOL The public sector lowest scale is from €24,000 to €39,000 (after 15 year's service). You seriously propose employing front-line staff on a wage of €19,000 after 15 year's service in the same job?

As I said


Now obviously this cannot be done :rolleyes:

MaceFace

smokingman wrote: »

Never been part of a union and never will.
I work in the private sector and if any crap was dealt to me from above, I got on with it, worked harder and left every evening knowing I had done a good days work. I see Unions as only useful to those who want a free ride and don't really have any idea of what a hard days work entails.

The likes of Siptu in AerLingus a few years ago when my other half was working there turned me even more against them. The people involved were only ever out for their own union career and the more shouting they did, the higher up in the union they got; even when their shouting was in no way representative of the employees sentiments.

It is very easy for the likes of us to dismiss the role the unions do as we never have had a need for them.
There are plenty of badly run businesses out there that would walk all over their employees were it not for the unions.
Just look at two high profile companies that don't recognise unions - Walmart and Ryanair. Neither have a particuarly good record when it comes to dealing with their employees.

The problem is not with Unions in todays economy, but rather how corrupt they have become in the role they are supposed to perform.

Taxipete29

Brigantes wrote: »

So, essentially the only solution to the problem is put more people on the dole?

50% pay cuts? LOL The public sector lowest scale is from €24,000 to €39,000 (after 15 year's service). You seriously propose employing front-line staff on a wage of €19,000 after 15 year's service in the same job?

Nobody is saying that. The idea however you get paid more because you are their longer is an old skool system and has no place in modern economy. Tesco when they took over Quinnsworth spent alot of time putting together packages to pay off staff who were there so long they were earning stupid wages for relatively little work. This prevented stores from hiring much needed staff to keep the shop running properly. This resulted in management having to pick up the slack.

While I have no specific knowledge of the workings of the PS I would imagine that there are many cases where reducing pay of some people could possibly result in the availabilty of more jobs. The most glaring one is reducing consultants pay to hire more nursing staff.

Brigantes

Taxipete29 wrote: »

While I have no specific knowledge of the workings of the PS I would imagine that there are many cases where reducing pay of some people could possibly result in the availabilty of more jobs. The most glaring one is reducing consultants pay to hire more nursing staff.

This is the type of thinking we (as a country) need to address, rather than the knee-jerk nonsense propagated by the media and drip-fed by FF. Take FAS for example. Would an across the board pay cut really solve anything? Clearly not. You're preaching to the converted here.

Aaron is leading the goat out to the desert...

OMD

Taxipete29 wrote: »

Nobody is saying that. The idea however you get paid more because you are their longer is an old skool system and has no place in modern economy. Tesco when they took over Quinnsworth spent alot of time putting together packages to pay off staff who were there so long they were earning stupid wages for relatively little work. This prevented stores from hiring much needed staff to keep the shop running properly. This resulted in management having to pick up the slack.

While I have no specific knowledge of the workings of the PS I would imagine that there are many cases where reducing pay of some people could possibly result in the availabilty of more jobs. The most glaring one is reducing consultants pay to hire more nursing staff.

Agree with you there Taxipete except for hiring more nurses. In 1998 we had 33,000 nurses employed in Ireland. Now we have 52,000. Has the health service improved enough in the last 11 years to justify this 50% increase?

We now have more whole time equivalent nurses in Ireland than any other OECD country. On top of that the nurses are paid more than nurses in any other OECD country. If we sacked 15,000 nurses we would save almost 1 billion a year and still have more nurses than countries like UK, France, Germany, Austria, Finland, Belgium. All these countries I would suggest have a better health service than us.

Again I am not actually saying we should sack nurses but certainly we need to stop employing more and look seriously at value for money from the nurses we have.

Taxipete29

OMD wrote: »

Agree with you there Taxipete except for hiring more nurses. In 1998 we had 33,000 nurses employed in Ireland. Now we have 52,000. Has the health service improved enough in the last 11 years to justify this 50% increase?

We now have more whole time equivalent nurses in Ireland than any other OECD country. On top of that the nurses are paid more than nurses in any other OECD country. If we sacked 15,000 nurses we would save almost 1 billion a year and still have more nurses than countries like UK, France, Germany, Austria, Finland, Belgium. All these countries I would suggest have a better health service than us.

Again I am not actually saying we should sack nurses but certainly we need to stop employing more and look seriously at value for money from the nurses we have.

Point taken and perhaps thats a bad example, but the money could be used to better effect. I dont know enough about the Health service to comment about how to fix it, but I do know that lack of money is not the problem is the use of it in the wrong places.

Brigantes

Taxipete29 wrote: »

Point taken and perhaps thats a bad example, but the money could be used to better effect. I dont know enough about the Health service to comment about how to fix it, but I do know that lack of money is not the problem is the use of it in the wrong places.

Isn't this the crux of the problem? We get another quick-fix, budgetary kick-in-the-nuts for those lazy, overpaid public sector workers and... so what?

nesf

Brigantes wrote: »

Isn't this the crux of the problem? We get another quick-fix, budgetary kick-in-the-nuts for those lazy, overpaid public sector workers and... so what?

But it's not a quick-fix solution. Public expenditure on the public sector pay bill has to come down. We're not getting sufficient tax revenues in to cover it. In reality it's got **** all to do with whether the public sector workers are fantastic or not, there just isn't enough money coming in to pay their wages so we either need to fire people or cut wage levels.

Or we can go cut pensions, unemployment benefit and so on. It's not much of a choice really between the two.

NewDubliner

nesf wrote: »

...Or we can go cut pensions, unemployment benefit and so on. It's not much of a choice really between the two.

Or we could flog one of our banks or property companies and save on borrowing to keep them in business?

nesf

NewDubliner wrote: »

Or we could flog one of our banks or property companies and save on borrowing to keep them in business?

We're not spending current expenditure on the banks. The deficit in the Budget is completely coming from Social Welfare spendings and Public Pay spending with a small amount spent on purchasing stuff. The whole NAMA thing is being funded separately to this through bond issuance.

So, just no, you don't know what you're talking about.

Edit: To be clear the Budget is the following:

Intake = Taxes, Levies etc.

Spending = Public Pay, Social Welfare, Purchases to keep public services running.

This is the Current Budget, this is where the deficit is. None of the reported deficit is coming from spending on banks, that's a wholly different matter. We're 20 Billion in the hole before we spend a cent on the banks. Now can you see why we need to cut spending?

Brigantes

nesf wrote: »

But it's not a quick-fix solution. Public expenditure on the public sector pay bill has to come down. We're not getting sufficient tax revenues in to cover it. In reality it's got **** all to do with whether the public sector workers are fantastic or not, there just isn't enough money coming in to pay their wages so we either need to fire people or cut wage levels.

Or we can go cut pensions, unemployment benefit and so on. It's not much of a choice really between the two.

My point is that cutting public sector wages doesn't improve, in any way, the current structures nor make our public services in any way more efficient. We'll still have cultures of expense claims, consultants, top-heavy management and waste. Where will we be this time next year? In the same boat, but with embittered public servants.

nesf

Brigantes wrote: »

My point is that cutting public sector wages doesn't improve, in any way, the current structures nor make our public services in any way more efficient. We'll still have cultures of expense claims, consultants, top-heavy management and waste. Where will we be this time next year? In the same boat, but with embittered public servants.

Sure, but that is a separate issue. The immediate problem is that we can't afford to pay the bill. So we need to cut down on the bill. Working on efficiency etc is great but that takes a lot of time and we don't have that. The medium term goal should most certainly be better value for money but we don't have the luxury of time in which to pursue that right now.

irish_bob

Brigantes wrote: »

My point is that cutting public sector wages doesn't improve, in any way, the current structures nor make our public services in any way more efficient. We'll still have cultures of expense claims, consultants, top-heavy management and waste. Where will we be this time next year? In the same boat, but with embittered public servants.

embittered public servants , i can handle and more importantly , afford , nurses , guards and teachers who earn 30% more than in countries which are wealthier than us , i cannot

Tipp Man

NewDubliner wrote: »

Or we could flog one of our banks or property companies and save on borrowing to keep them in business?

nesf wrote: »

We're not spending current expenditure on the banks. The deficit in the Budget is completely coming from Social Welfare spendings and Public Pay spending with a small amount spent on purchasing stuff. The whole NAMA thing is being funded separately to this through bond issuance.

So, just no, you don't know what you're talking about.

Edit: To be clear the Budget is the following:

Intake = Taxes, Levies etc.

Spending = Public Pay, Social Welfare, Purchases to keep public services running.

This is the Current Budget, this is where the deficit is. None of the reported deficit is coming from spending on banks, that's a wholly different matter. We're 20 Billion in the hole before we spend a cent on the banks. Now can you see why we need to cut spending?

Now New Dubliner for the love of god can you please please take heed of NESF post, read it and think about it, and please please stop bringing in your stupid obsession with banks/NAMA all the time

its getting really tiresome

Brigantes

nesf wrote: »

Sure, but that is a separate issue. The immediate problem is that we can't afford to pay the bill. So we need to cut down on the bill. Working on efficiency etc is great but that takes a lot of time and we don't have that. The medium term goal should most certainly be better value for money but we don't have the luxury of time in which to pursue that right now.

Yes, the public sector wage-bill is top-heavy and needs adjusting but I don't feel that efficiency is a seperate issue. There needs to be the political leadership to tackle the situation of our completely mis-managed public services. Take the HSE for example - we have a Minister for Health who plays Pontius Pilate, for God's sake.

The luxury of time? We've had 10 months of 2009... what exactly have the Government done to steady the ship? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Unless you count embarking on a media campaign to make us all believe that public sector workers really are all permanent and pensionable and on 50 grand a year.

nesf

Brigantes wrote: »

Yes, the public sector wage-bill is top-heavy and needs adjusting but I don't feel that efficiency is a seperate issue. There needs to be the political leadership to tackle the situation of our completely mis-managed public services. Take the HSE for example - we have a Minister for Health who plays Pontius Pilate, for God's sake.

The luxury of time? We've had 10 months of 2009... what exactly have the Government done to steady the ship? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Unless you count embarking on a media campaign to make us all believe that public sector workers really are all permanent and pensionable and on 50 grand a year.

Eh, ok. Well, efficiency would mean a root and branch reworking of working conditions in the public service. Reworking of archaic practices like automatic pay increases for seniority and so on. Not exactly the kind of stuff that can be managed quickly. I'd love to see the Government tackle it but honestly I can't see them doing much other than a couple of "efficiencies" involving band aids rather than the kind of surgery needed.

OMD

Brigantes wrote: »

The luxury of time? We've had 10 months of 2009... what exactly have the Government done to steady the ship? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Unless you count embarking on a media campaign to make us all believe that public sector workers really are all permanent and pensionable and on 50 grand a year.

Brigantes, you keep going on about how people feel public servants earn 50K a year. The average public servant earns over45K a year, their job is permanent and pensionable. According to CSO average public sector worker (excluding health) earned €49343 in 2008. Now are you happy.

http://www.cso.ie/quicktables/GetQuickTables.aspx?FileName=PSA01.asp&TableName=Public+Sector+Average+Weekly+Earnings&StatisticalProduct=DB_PS

gandalf

Hang on I thought the whole idea of benchmarking was to deliver efficiencies, oh wait apparently Joe O'Toole said once that benchmarking was an ATM machine for public sector workers. Sounds like a Dire Straits song, money for nothing and your chicks for free !!!

Riskymove

OMD wrote: »

average public sector worker (excluding health) earned €49343 in 2008.

not this again...there is no such thing as an average public sector worker...."the average public servant earns €49k" is complete rubbish

the average public sector wage was €49,343 in 2008

a large proportion of the PS earns less than that

OMD

Riskymove wrote: »

not this again...there is no such thing as an average public sector worker...."the average public servant earns €49k" is complete rubbish

the average public sector wage was €49,343 in 2008

a large proportion of the PS earns less than that

Well of course they do. It is an average. Brigantes keeps going on about it as if it is some made up figure. It is not. You say that

...."the average public servant earns €49k" is complete rubbish

Then show us. You say the CSO is wrong. Show us.