Sir, –Kevin P McCarthy is absolutely right ( November 19th) when he highlights the lack of job security and pension rights for young teachers in comparison to longer-established colleagues. Similar shabby treatment also applies to new entrants to other vital public service professions, such as nursing and policing.
A more cynical person than myself might think that this unfairness is a consequence of public sector union tactics in negotiations with the Government that seem to have been designed to protect, so far as was possible, the benefits of existing union members at the expense of new entrants.
However, regardless of the undisputed unfair treatment of specific groups of young public servants, the big picture is that the public service as an entity enjoys a level of job security and salary and pension benefits which are virtually unknown in the modern private sector. Funding those benefits currently costs the State and its taxpayers a third of annual state expenditure – almost €20 billion annually.
Contrary to some views, the simple fact is that the country has no spare cash (in fact, in 2016 we are still borrowing money to pay for day-to-day expenditure). So it’s back to the awkward elephant in the room – where is the money for across-the-board public service pay increases going to come from?
It is telling that the president of one of our public service unions recently suggested that the reduced VAT rate applying to the tourism and hospitality sector should be abolished so as to help fund public service pay increases. Unlike the public sector, but in common with many other parts of the private sector, the tourism and hospitality business is vulnerable to external political and currency exchange rate risks that are far beyond the Government’s control. It is also associated with low levels of pay and low levels of union membership. So a big and powerful public sector union does not appear to have any scruples about rolling over other less fortunate employment sectors in its campaign to secure further benefits for its already well-off members.
The Irish trade union movement can rightly be proud of its century-long fight for workers’ rights and greater social justice and equality. Some public sector unions seem to be in danger of forgetting this noble heritage. – Yours, etc,
ARTHUR BOLAND,
Dublin 2.
Sir, – The attempts to deny that attempts by public servants to recover their pre-2010 pay scales can be accurately described as pay restoration and not pay increases are good examples of “post-truth” politics discussed elsewhere in your newspaper. It is a simple fact that public servants are now on lower pay scales than in 2009 and are also subject to a pension levy.
Government justified breaking its employees’ contracts because of the financial crash and enabled it through the financial emergency measures in the public interest (Fempi) emergency legislation. Indeed, Fempi has been renewed annually since then, as these emergency pay cuts do not represent a permanent change to public service salaries.
It is instructive to contrast the indignation over the slow restoration of public sector pay with the silence over the outright refusal of the legal profession to accept any meaningful changes proposed under the early version of the legal services Bill. The troika had insisted on opening up competition in the legal profession, along with public sector pay cuts, as a way of reducing costs and therefore wages also but the Government caved in under pressure from the Law Library. There is a deafening silence about this capitulation. – Yours, etc,
DONAL McGRATH,
Greystones,
Co Wicklow.