CSO report on public-private pay gap

barneystinson

flintash wrote: »

Chris_5339762 wrote: »

I would add to that the public sector junior docs, registrars, etc etc who are similarly working absolutely ridiculous hours that are expressly forbidden under the working time directives. eg: Surgery trainees doing up to 120 hours per week and not getting a bit of overtime for any of it over their standard 35,37 or whatever contract.

31 hours does seem quite low though. Most contracts that I'm aware of are 35 hours over 7 days, 8am - 8pm rostering. If the AVERAGE is 31, what have they included? Are part timers thrown into that average? Are there people on ridiculously short contracts?

really? so he's 48 hours left in a week to sleep. Make me believe it:D

Tut, too lazy to Google "junior doctor working hours" eh?
Well here's one of the first hits, and it's as recent as 2 months ago: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/letters/2012/0809/1224321806412.html

"Recently I spoke to a young doctor in a busy hospital who commenced work that day at 8.30am and was having her first break at 11.10pm as she took a call from me. The only food available to her was a bowl of cereal. She was on duty for the rest of the night and the following day and was expected to work more than 100 hours that week."

Now you may say, sure that's only anecdotal evidence from a letter to the Irish Times, in which case I'd say the letter is signed so feck off and ask yerwoman who wrote it what the name of the doctor in question is, if you're still not happy.

OMD

Godge wrote: »

OMD wrote: »

Do you understand PS pensions?
Do you think the pension board link can calculate the equivalent of a PS pension?
If you do then you seriously do not understand pensions.
From your comments I presume you cannot/will not answer the previous questions

I don't think you understand pensions either. Public servants have a new pension scheme. Have a read of the Trident report on this site.

http://www.into.ie/pensions/

I know it is a union report but since the report was commissioned there have been further cuts in pay for new teachers.

some interesting quotes in relation to the new scheme

"15) We have tested the new proposals across various scenarios and the following

profiles are among those which would pay more in than they would get out of

the new scheme:

a) age 21 joiner, no promotion, unbroken service;

b) age 21 joiner, Special Duties post at age 40, unbroken service;

c) age 25 joiner, no promotion, unbroken service;

d) age 25 joiner, no promotion, 5 year career break."

Right so. Just out of curiosity. Of all the current Public sector workers and all the current PS pensioners to what percentage does this apply? Just a rough figure. Seeing as you say I don't understand public sector pensions that apply to the enormous majority of PS workers current and past.

OMD

Godge wrote: »

OMD wrote: »

Are you saying the vast majority of PS workers do not have a final salary of less than €50,000? Please provide proof. The average salary is above 40k so common sense dictates final salary will be above 50k. It is final salary that counts

Just thinking about this again. Are you saying the state old age pension is €24,000 a year?

No he wasn't. What he said was the spouse's pension is half the public servant's pension which is therefore a quarter of salary.

Sorry about that. Of course it is half but it still applies to the majority rather than the minority as the previous poster made out.

flintash

barneystinson wrote: »

Tut, too lazy to Google "junior doctor working hours" eh?.....still not happy.

Is this happening in HSE department?
I though they cant make people do acctual work there, never mind 120hours
relax dude, reading too much newspapers, uh?
p.s. (off-topic) run and buy a house - prices are rising again
Peace

barneystinson

flintash wrote: »

barneystinson wrote: »

Tut, too lazy to Google "junior doctor working hours" eh?.....still not happy.

Is this happening in HSE department?
I though they cant make people do acctual work there, never mind 120hours
relax dude, reading too much newspapers, uh?
p.s. (off-topic) run and buy a house - prices are rising again
Peace

I'm pretty sure you're one of a tiny minority who think that frontline doctors & nurses don't "do actual work". I think it's pretty much universally accepted that it's the administration and management of the health services that are the main problem. I was in a hospital ward with a relative this week and the staff I saw were all flat out.

cosbloodymick

OMD wrote: »

Your figures are wrong for 2 reasons. You are not including the lump sum if up to 1.5 times final salary.

You are also assuming if the person retires on €36,000 that they actually earned that all their working lives. This applies to no public servant. By doing this you are ignoring inflation, pay rises and pay increments and promotions. So the figures you supply are totally wrong.

In addition the 15% pension contribution while actually closer to 13%, only applies to the last 4 years. So someone returning now would not have paid this for the vast majority of their working lives. For most if the time they would have paid 6.5%.

Anyway future PS retirees will be entitled to the PRSI pension. Current ones are not because they did not pay enough PRSI.

Lump sum and increments accepted, I would still argue you are losing out big time if you are a lower paid public servant. I know of many who would trade in the "rolls royce gold plated pension" for the state old age pension and do their own savings rather than contribute to the public service pension.

Also future public service retirees do not get the PRSI pension ON TOP of their public service pension despite paying the higher rate PRSI. Its included/ran in with their Public Service pension.

Another issue is that all income of a public servant is not pensionable eg overtime, yet Public Servants pay pension levies on income that is not even pensionable which is very unfair.

sock puppet

woodoo wrote: »

At a quick glace over that report it looks like the PS is paid about 10 to 15% more than the private sector. But this seems to be due to the higher education achieved by PS workers, a higher number of professional qualifications in the PS. And most worryingly of all the private sector seems to be stuck in the last century in terms of sexism and low pay for women.

Eh what? Do you really think the statisticians in the CSO are so inept as to not take education, gender and professional status into account in their regression analyses? They're all used as explanatory variables.

cosbloodymick

sock puppet wrote: »

Eh what? Do you really think the statisticians in the CSO are so inept as to not take education, gender and professional status into account in their regression analyses? They're all used as explanatory variables.

They didn't take the pension levy into account!

Head The Wall

cosbloodymick wrote: »

They didn't take the pension levy into account!

Yes that's because they also didn't include any private sector pension contributions in the calculations. You know, so they can do equal comparisons.

[Jackass]

The fact that this report is being branded about by pro-ps people as though it somehow shows things aren't that lob-sided really shows how bad the situation is... "look, PS workers aren't paid 50% more" :smug: when the actual figure depending on rate of pay ranges from up to a quarter to one third...

God save us all.

The averaged out figure is also misleading because the pay scale at the top of the private sector is unlimited, so directors of multi-national companies could be on 1m+ a year.

It's the low to middling employees up to the median score that is most interesting, and that score at over 38% is incredible and actually worse than I thought.

I don't know, I don't want to keep beating the same drum, I just have serious difficultly in comprehending how anyone, private or public sector, can't see how public wages (in certain areas) should be slashed.... I like to think I'm pretty balanced and diplomatic on these matters, but this is just one topic where I really really can't understand the opposite position of public sector wages being appropriate...

(for example I would increase, and substationally in some cases, aspects such as nursing wages, but that would be funded by big cuts in the administration pay cut and would redeploy the work force to get value for money and find a surplus to invest in capital infrastructure to stimulate growth - not cutting expenditure, just redeploying resources more efficiently and productively..)

Riskymove

[Jackass] wrote: »

The averaged out figure is also misleading because the pay scale at the top of the private sector is unlimited, so directors of multi-national companies could be on 1m+ a year.

It's the low to middling employees up to the median score that is most interesting, and that score at over 38% is incredible and actually worse than I thought.

if you think that the highest private sectors skew comparisons then would you not accept that the low, minimum-wage, wages paid in certain private sectors also skew comparisons?

comparing the wages of any one group of workers (public or private) to an average wage of all private sector is, imo, pretty meaningless. For example you can take certain sectors of the Private sector and they are also well ahead of the overall average wage - yet I see little evidence that people find this unfair.

Godge

sock puppet wrote: »

Eh what? Do you really think the statisticians in the CSO are so inept as to not take education, gender and professional status into account in their regression analyses? They're all used as explanatory variables.

Yes, they are used as explanatory variables but maybe I need to read it again as it wasn't clear that the figures were adjusted for the explanatory variables.

Godge

[Jackass] wrote: »

...

The averaged out figure is also misleading because the pay scale at the top of the private sector is unlimited, so directors of multi-national companies could be on 1m+ a year.

..)

wrong, directors would be classed as self-employed. If you look at revenue statistics for instance, the self-employed in the private sector have the greatest earning power. One of the problems with the CSO data all along was the greater number of self-employed in Ireland and the fact that their higher earnings were excluded from comparison with the public sector. This was one of the reasons Ireland had a greater public sector pay premium than other countries.

Geuze

Godge wrote: »

Yes, they are used as explanatory variables but maybe I need to read it again as it wasn't clear that the figures were adjusted for the explanatory variables.

They were.

Tipp Man

Godge wrote: »

wrong, directors would be classed as self-employed. If you look at revenue statistics for instance, the self-employed in the private sector have the greatest earning power. One of the problems with the CSO data all along was the greater number of self-employed in Ireland and the fact that their higher earnings were excluded from comparison with the public sector. This was one of the reasons Ireland had a greater public sector pay premium than other countries.

since when are directors of multi nationals classed as self employed??

Godge

Tipp Man wrote: »

since when are directors of multi nationals classed as self employed??

All company directors are classed as self-employed. That is what you meant by director?

ahnowbrowncow

Tipp Man wrote: »

since when are directors of multi nationals classed as self employed??

Godge wrote: »

All company directors are classed as self-employed. That is what you meant by director?

Only if they have more than 50% of the voting rights???

[Jackass]

Godge wrote: »

wrong, directors would be classed as self-employed. If you look at revenue statistics for instance, the self-employed in the private sector have the greatest earning power. One of the problems with the CSO data all along was the greater number of self-employed in Ireland and the fact that their higher earnings were excluded from comparison with the public sector. This was one of the reasons Ireland had a greater public sector pay premium than other countries.

Well, I'm talking about directors of multinationals, such as the European Operations Manager in Google or Chief Executive of Davy Stockbrokers. They would own shares in the company alright, but would very much be employees as apposed to self-employed. The reason they skew the results is there is no equivalent in the public sector.

Riskymove wrote: »

if you think that the highest private sectors skew comparisons then would you not accept that the low, minimum-wage, wages paid in certain private sectors also skew comparisons?

comparing the wages of any one group of workers (public or private) to an average wage of all private sector is, imo, pretty meaningless. For example you can take certain sectors of the Private sector and they are also well ahead of the overall average wage - yet I see little evidence that people find this unfair.

As above, the higher end has no equivalent, where as there are many people doing the same job in the public and private sector on minimum wage so it is a relevant comparison, just the figures tend to show that while you might be on minimum wage for a job in private sector, you can tend to be on a highly inflated wage with a fat pension paid for by the taxpayer in the public sector, as long as you've been doing it for 20+ years... Productivity, performance and output should define wage levels, not longevity...

Gumbo

[Jackass] wrote: »

just the figures tend to show that while you might be on minimum wage for a job in private sector, you can tend to be on a highly inflated wage with a fat pension paid for by the taxpayer in the public sector, as long as you've been doing it for 20+ years... Productivity, performance and output should define wage levels, not longevity...

In one post you claim your are diplomatic and level headed yet you come out with a statement like that WTF ????

Middle earners in the PS, lets say average industrial wage earners, can you outline what this fat pension paid by the tax payer is?

[Jackass]

kceire wrote: »

In one post you claim your are diplomatic and level headed yet you come out with a statement like that WTF ????

Middle earners in the PS, lets say average industrial wage earners, can you outline what this fat pension paid by the tax payer is?

Hold on a second and rewind, we're still on the point of inflated wages and that's where the propping up by the tax payer is coming in. It's hardly offensive, just a fact.

Put it this way, if everything was privatised (which obviously I'm not suggesting it should be) and where applicable competition was introduced, what do you think would happen to staffing levels, pay rates and efficiency in the public sector? I'll give you a clue, two of them would fall dramatically and one of them would rise dramatically.

That's the bottom line. There should be no sense of being owed a living. This is a dog eat dog world and being wrapped up in cotton wool and put on a pay scale with little or no incentive to be either productive nor efficient just means we (you and I as tax payers) are being ripped off...

If you ran your own business for example, I think you would suddenly become a lot less charitable towards peoples god given entitlements (or merely percieved) and a lot more aware of the bottom line...

Maybe we're from two different worlds, maybe that's why there's such a gap between perspectives on each side of the table here - one side seems to think it should be about security and being looked after and the other side thinks it should be all about the bottom line and earning....

I do think I'm fair and balanced, but I just think a tough private sector view point scares the bejesus out of public sector people and they can't get their head around it....like I said, two different worlds...

cosbloodymick

Head The Wall wrote: »

Yes that's because they also didn't include any private sector pension contributions in the calculations. You know, so they can do equal comparisons.

Thankyou for supporting my initial contribution to this debate.
The private sector employee gets a state pension which would cost 250,000 to buy. The Public Sector worker does not.
This anomaly is never addressed when comparing public and private sector remuneration.

ardmacha

I do think I'm fair and balanced, but I just think a tough private sector view point scares the bejesus out of public sector people and they can't get their head around it

yeah right. Lets introduce tough AIB style sanctions for bad decision making into the Bomb squad, the result would be massive loss of life.

cosbloodymick

[Jackass] wrote: »

Hold on a second and rewind, we're still on the point of inflated wages and that's where the propping up by the tax payer is coming in. It's hardly offensive, just a fact.

I work in the Public Sector and my wages are far from inflated.

Put it this way, if everything was privatised (which obviously I'm not suggesting it should be) and where applicable competition was introduced, what do you think would happen to staffing levels, pay rates and efficiency in the public sector? I'll give you a clue, two of them would fall dramatically and one of them would rise dramatically.

In the private sector if business is increasing, staffing levels and wages rise. In the public sector the opposite happens.

That's the bottom line. There should be no sense of being owed a living. This is a dog eat dog world and being wrapped up in cotton wool and put on a pay scale with little or no incentive to be either productive nor efficient just means we (you and I as tax payers) are being ripped off...

I don't feel anyone owes me a living. I work hard for my salary.

If you ran your own business for example, I think you would suddenly become a lot less charitable towards peoples god given entitlements (or merely percieved) and a lot more aware of the bottom line...

I don't accept charity from anyone!


Maybe we're from two different worlds, maybe that's why there's such a gap between perspectives on each side of the table here - one side seems to think it should be about security and being looked after and the other side thinks it should be all about the bottom line and earning....

What makes you think Public sector workers do not earn their wages?

I do think I'm fair and balanced, but I just think a tough private sector view point scares the bejesus out of public sector people and they can't get their head around it....like I said, two different worlds...

Does not scare me at all. I have worked in both public and private sectors.
I can see things from both viewpoints. I would wager that the public service bashers have only seen one side of the coin!

not yet

Can anyone confirm that banking sector workers are not included in this report.

I this is so then the figures are even closer then the report states.

Tipp Man

Godge wrote: »

All company directors are classed as self-employed. That is what you meant by director?

Only if they are majority shareholders of the company

Edit: or it could be voting rights - either way the directors of the vast vast majority of multi national and foreign companies in Ireland are not self employed

srsly78

Yes but lots of high-earning "professionals" are, like accountants, lawyers, doctors, consultants etc operating through their own small company. These people operate as paye employees of their company, but own a large stake and thus count as "proprietary directors" = self-employed.

Tipp Man

srsly78 wrote: »

Yes but lots of high-earning "professionals" are, like accountants, lawyers, doctors, consultants etc operating through their own small company. These people operate as paye employees of their company, but own a large stake and thus count as "proprietary directors" = self-employed.

the original post about directors and my subsequent post clearly states directors of large and multi national companies

Gumbo

[Jackass] wrote: »

Hold on a second and rewind, we're still on the point of inflated wages and that's where the propping up by the tax payer is coming in. It's hardly offensive, just a fact.

Put it this way, if everything was privatised (which obviously I'm not suggesting it should be) and where applicable competition was introduced, what do you think would happen to staffing levels, pay rates and efficiency in the public sector? I'll give you a clue, two of them would fall dramatically and one of them would rise dramatically.

That's the bottom line. There should be no sense of being owed a living. This is a dog eat dog world and being wrapped up in cotton wool and put on a pay scale with little or no incentive to be either productive nor efficient just means we (you and I as tax payers) are being ripped off...

If you ran your own business for example, I think you would suddenly become a lot less charitable towards peoples god given entitlements (or merely percieved) and a lot more aware of the bottom line...

Maybe we're from two different worlds, maybe that's why there's such a gap between perspectives on each side of the table here - one side seems to think it should be about security and being looked after and the other side thinks it should be all about the bottom line and earning....

I do think I'm fair and balanced, but I just think a tough private sector view point scares the bejesus out of public sector people and they can't get their head around it....like I said, two different worlds...

Pretty much the same upbringing as myself. Father is self employed and 2 of my brothers are self employed, all running their own small business, so i know how tough it is. I spent my whole life working in the private sector, until 2009, where i joined the PS where i remain today.

I have seen the argument from both sides too

but you didnt answer my question, what Fat Pension are you talking about? Are you saying the average PS employee gets a fat pension or are you talking about the TD's and senior Civil Servants?

[Jackass] wrote: »

Put it this way, if everything was privatised (which obviously I'm not suggesting it should be) and where applicable competition was introduced, what do you think would happen to staffing levels, pay rates and efficiency in the public sector? I'll give you a clue, two of them would fall dramatically and one of them would rise dramatically.

Yes, just like Waste Collection......
People screamed for Dublin City Council to give up their grip on waste collection and for it to be privatised. When it happened, service dropped and cost to the public rised. People in my estate are now kicking themselves they belittled council staff for years and would swap back to DCC in a heart beat.

not yet

kceire wrote: »

Pretty much the same upbringing as myself. Father is self employed and 2 of my brothers are self employed, all running their own small business, so i know how tough it is. I spent my whole life working in the private sector, until 2009, where i joined the PS where i remain today.

I have seen the argument from both sides too

but you didnt answer my question, what Fat Pension are you talking about? Are you saying the average PS employee gets a fat pension or are you talking about the TD's and senior Civil Servants?



Yes, just like Waste Collection......
People screamed for Dublin City Council to give up their grip on waste collection and for it to be privatised. When it happened, service dropped and cost to the public rised. People in my estate are now kicking themselves they belittled council staff for years and would swap back to DCC in a heart beat.

The only people to gain from private enterprise is big business and the people who run it, Services run by the state or local councils would be much different in private hands, people can spout all they like about how the they would like services to be run by big business but the only thing that would happen is every employee would work foe minimum wage and shareholders and company directors would be the only ones to benefit. Do we really want a Ireland inc or a decent place to live.

not yet

The only ones to benefit from private enterprise are shareholders and company directors, If that's the country we want then so be it, I don't..I prefer a country that my children can work in a be paid a decent wage rather then line the pockets of big business.