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FREEZE A WORKER’S pay by edict and he will wait in the long grass for an opportunity to recover his lost living standards. Cut the pay of a generation of workers and freeze their living standards indefinitely and they will strike back in the most convoluted ways.
Intelligent employers know the score. Work is essentially a commodity that’s bought and sold in a marketplace. Pay peanuts, get monkeys.
Years ago I worked for prolonged periods as a ‘track maintenance labourer’ on the British railways. The work was hard and dangerous, the pay was great.
Each week I got two pay packets – one for a fictitious Patrick O’Sullivan
Each week I got two pay packets, one made out in my name, the other in the fictitious name Patrick O’Sullivan. Like me, fictitious Pat had a tax number and paid income tax and social insurance. But I kept his net pay.
I was working for a major civil engineering firm whose shares were (and still are) quoted on the London Stock Exchange. They were supplying services on contract to 100% state owned British Rail.
The British government of the time was obsessed with keeping a lid on pay. The number one aim of economic policy was to wipe out the other English disease-inflation. It imposed a pay freeze.
My employers felt this did not make sense. Workers had to ‘make up their (real) wages’ somehow. Therefore there were ‘dummy’ workers all over the rail network. The situation became so crazy that fictitious Pat and I would do ‘emergency shifts’ on double time every Saturday night, even when there were no ‘emergencies’.
I found three men lying fast asleep in sleeping bags
On one such night the ganger sent me to collect thirty-two fishplates from a hut a mile up the track. As I entered the pitch black hut I heard a pronounced rustling noise. For a moment I thought the hut was full of rats but when I switched on a torch I found three men lying fast asleep in sleeping bags.
All three were managers employed directly by British Rail, one a senior area manager. Unlike me they did not get ‘top-up’ pay but they ‘worked’ nights by choice. But they had basically lost interest in their jobs. They slept most of those nights.
Expenditure Minister Brendan Howlin should not be at all surprised that last week’s trawl of the health sector turned up 36 new types of special allowance being paid to 190 different individuals, mostly top apparatchiks.
He’ll be rightly annoyed that the payments were not revealed two years ago when he uncovered 1,400 different special pay allowances across the public sector as part of a review of the Croke Park deal and its effects. How many more of these arrangements are still lurking in the woodwork?
The ‘justification’
In some cases the ‘justification’ advanced for the payments is threadbare, the methods used to fund them very shabby indeed. Health sector chiefs claim that the recipients of the payments are performing tasks ‘over and above’ their normal contractual obligations. Hospitals are accused of tapping the cash flow of sweetshops and car parks on their campuses to finance the payments. Meanwhile sick people wait in queues as hospital chiefs protest loudly about the underfunding of the health service.
The discovery caused a predictable wave of moralising across government and media. In Dáil Éireann, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin became apoplectic and lashed out at “disturbing, under the carpet” payments. There are no carpets in hospitals, Mick.
The Irish Times fulminated about the culture of “perceived entitlement”, about people who were “detached from social and ethical obligations”.
Humbug
This is mostly humbug. It’s not so long since reporters on Dublin daily newspapers got Revenue-approved ‘outdoor clothing allowances’ in case their clothes got splashed with Chablis or Puligny-Montrachet at some press reception.
And when it comes to special payments for customised services you could not hold a candle to Fianna Fáil. In government the party saw half its backbench TDs getting top-up payments for chairing Oireachtas committees. It imposed a completely alien culture of financial reward on tiers of local government that had for decades been performed on a voluntary basis. And in certain instances it permitted its public representatives to fill out expense claims that might have made it onto the shortlist for the Impac award for short works of fiction.
Howlin faces an immediate legal problem about how to deal with the latest batch of special payments. In many cases there may be a contractual obligation on government to continue the payments which can account for half of an individual’s remuneration.
An appalling message
Yet simultaneously the payments may contravene both the Croke Park and Haddington Road agreements. Failure to clamp down on them would send an appalling message to public servants on modest incomes, however. Is there one law for the top layers of bureaucracy, another for ordinary workers?
Financial controllers across the public service appear to have been using all kinds of imaginative schemes to remunerate senior staff. There are obvious ways to do this such as the payment of car allowances, mileage allowances and health insurance premiums.
Other less obvious means include tasking staff members with ‘posts of responsibility’ such as serving on boards of directors of subsidiary enterprises, chairing special committees, acting as company secretary and so forth. In many cases too, it appears that senior managers are given automatic entitlement to ‘extra years of service’ in calculating their final pension entitlements.
This may all be reprehensible when judged in the context of six years of Troika-imposed austerity. But does central government possess the moral authority to launch an all-out attack on top-up payments?
Milk the system
The model of social partnership promoted since 1987 relies for its internal cohesion on permitting people at various levels within the system to milk that system for their own benefit. Senior public servants became what in the old Soviet Union were referred to as Nomenklatura, essentially upscale paid hangers-on of the regime. Trade union officials got sucked in too, in some cases.
Dismantling the system may mean dismantling the process whereby we have controlled our labour markets for a quarter of a century. Ireland’s Nomenklatura are in many cases the authors and executors of the current six-year pay freeze.
Many rank and file workers might prefer at this stage to change the rules of the game. And all economists agree: an improvement in domestic spending is a necessary pre-condition for full economic recovery.
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I think that’s a very good idea. If you are a citizen of the state that has paid their dues for their lifetime, then the least you can expect is the government of the day to acknowledge it through a public website if you so choose.
@Tom tom: You’d be making the grave mistake in assuming the government cares.
@Marvin Dollery: You almost made a pun there. Who said you were completely humourless?
@Brendan O’Brien: Nobody said. What’s laughable is anyone who thinks the government care about ordinary civilians dying. They only mourn those that allow them to be seen in public for photo ops.
@Tom tom: No, it’ll end costing 2.75 billion.
@Tom tom: The Irish don’t do ‘digital’ well enough. While I think they should definitely crush this, would they be able to do it effectively? RIP.ie is literally the only Irish website that has ever worked properly.
With RIP, we’ll have to pay €100 when a loved one passes away. With a state run website we’ll have to pay €100 every year through taxes!
@John K:
If a private company costs €100 and state one will need at least€200 from taxes to do it
@John K: I don’t understand why this would be hard, I thought the robots were gonna ‘take over’? surely this is a piece of Ai and a little deal with the next data centre contract and we’re good to go! Not sure why we cant utilise the private sector and keep it public.
@John K: the opposite is the case, once a service is privatised the costs go up exponentially, just look at bin charges, ESB…
Yeah, because everything else that is state run, is running smoothly
@Peter Igloo: Far better than privately run armies, police and fire services, health services…
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: HSE?
Keep it simple:
Jack’s dead, Toyota for sale, as new.
@J B: done and dusted.ie
@J B: wow what a sexist comment to make
Every time somebody dies, there’s money required to pay for all sorts of things. Inheritance tax, funeral expenses, lawyers fees and much more. Death = money for many organisations. It would be a respectful showing if the government actually put some of the inheritance tax towards a national digital death registry where condolences may be added with some sensible policing. It doesn’t need to be engineered like the new children’s hospital nor does it need to be planned for 10 years. Something fairly basic is enough.
@Injustice Cop: I paid 50 euros for gates be opened I’ve never seen them closed
@Injustice Cop: Alas they would have to ‘work’ then so it’s unlikely
While it may seem at first to be a good idea, the mere term “state run” should tell you that it would be a disaster.
It would end up costing millions to set up and many more millions to run it; it would need several unelected quangos to oversee it; it would require legions of highly paid staff to run it; it might not open anytime before 2035; every NGO in the country would have to have an input; it would become a convenient political football and a useful distraction.
The real cost would be about €2500 per notice deducted straight from the deceased’s estate. Unless, of course, the deceased never worked a day in their life, in which case the deceased’s estate would be credited with several thousands of taxpayers money.
Now convince me that I am wrong, please.
M
Probably would end up costing a fortune for users
Why are people so keen to pay more tax?? The same people who voted yes will be complaining about all the tax they have to pay and the high cost of living!
No it’s a ridiculous waste of money, how did people cope before the internet? Pretty sure the dead were still buried!
@Chutes: It’s about the people left behind, who might be interested in paying their respects etc. Where’s the harm in facilitating this?
@Brendan O’Brien: Post a sympathy card.
@Brendan O’Brien: I still don’t get the point. If you don’t know by word that someone died, you’re obviously not this close that (paying your respect” would matter?
Is there another point\use for rip.ie ?
Watch it cost an absolute fortune and be wholly unfit for purpose at the same time.
Remember anti-vaxx sickos trawling RIP.ie during Covid and sharing people’s death notices on social media, very dark minds.
@Jacintha Dumbrell: I remember a certain lefty called Mr Cosgrave, who falsely announced that Irish nurses had died as a result of said pandemic
@Peter Igloo: He erroneously tweeted about nurses although Dr Syed Waqqar Ali (Mater Hospital became the eighth healthcare worker to die from Covid on (22.07.20).
@Peter Igloo: Mamy – far too many – medical professionals died during the pandemic as a result of trying to provide care to infected patients.
Are you trying to say that Irish medical professionals were somehow immune?
Don’t be sick.
Or anything else that rhymes with that.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: I never said anything like that, just stating that Cosgrave posted a pack of lies
@Jack Hayes: that doctor was a nurse?
The sooner the government formation is done the better. We won’t have BS stories like this as filler.
The journalists must have been overjoyed with the snow, god knows how they’d have filled the columns otherwise for the last week!
@Ronan Mc: The vast majority of stories have not been about the snow.
I love the Italian tradition where there are local notice boards where you post your condolences using standard size notices.
It’s too expensive to die now. Only in this country!
I have given my family instructions. Throw me in a bin bag and hurl me into the sea, and absolutely no online message (or as legally close to that as you can get). The funeral industry is a leach when people are are their most vulnerable.
What staffing level would be required to run this service? If information supplied by undertakers would 2 to three be sufficient?
@Vincent Alexander: if people were allowed post condolences on it you would need a lot more than that, it would need 24/7 supervision, so a team of 3 with a supervisor, multiply that by 4 teams and then an overall head of project. If not people would end up taking cases against the state for any discriminatory comments. It would probably cost over a million per annum. I would prefer to see the money used for something beneficial like home help for the elderly.
@The next small thing: Would one shift a day seven days a week not be adequate. It is not a necessary service but one that is useful and used by a lot of people – particularly those in the waiting room and not in a hurry to go.
@The next small thing: RIP.ie were able to run the whole show with just 4 staff with no problems. If it was state owned, it would probably be 400.
Remove the condolences facility from RIP.IE (or whatever). If you wish to sympathise then send a card, telephone them or call around. Offer help. Far nicer, far more personal and far more meaningful.
@Comments Section Closed: The names address are in the death notice. “Johnny Murphy of 2, Station Road, etc. Sadly missed by etc. etc.”
No such thing as a free lunch from our irish government the poor tax payer will be screwed to foot the bill yet again
@liam ward: so where do you suggest governments get funds to pay for services, if not taxes?
I’ll pay directly or via taxes. I’ll pay either way. It’s a useful service whoever it’s provided by.
@Jack Hayes: How much do you want for the Toyota Jack.
Where I live, there’s still a copper line servicing the house for the phone line. Eir and Vodafone both refused to service it so I’m stuck with Pure Telecom who
charge extortionate rates.
I contacted the competition regulator and Comreg only to be told tough.
So much for a competition regulator.
Stop buying the irish times vote with your pocket there grave robbers
This government is already dead to me.
@Shane O Mac: cool
Considering the amount of tax we pay why not , oh i forgot the ffg entitled wasters are too concerned for thier wealthy mates, the couldn’t give a f for ordinary irish citizens
The state should get the co.cos to maintain the roads and fill the potholes so we don’t end up dead.
@Tony Hanson: The councils should be able to raise local taxes to do this.
@Me Me: councils don’t spend money for the people. They would ignore the potholes and buy a new limo for the mayor
Conceptually a good idea, but practically the government would spend a fortune on it. It would be cheaper for them to buy and then licence the existing RIP.ie site on the basis that clients do not pay. There are many ways to monetize a site like RIP.ie without charging your content generators.
Could they try look after the living first
It definitely needs to be called “Mournhub” or “Jez, did you hear who died”
Why does the state have to be involved in everything
@John Purcell: Lmao… but they do nothing?
Can you imagine the cost of the state created it, it would make riip look like peanuts. And they would make it compulsory.
Talk about deflection.
How about the government concentrate on their core business – like soaring house costs, uncontrolled illegal immigration welfare scammers, health education, inflation.
Hue gives a dam about if you are living or dead when they don’t come to see you when you living whiy would they care about you wen you dead
Now that the rip is changing, it’s a win win all around, rip get the money in, rev charge vat, everyone is happy, why would the government Knock that little earner on the head?.
Gosh us Irish are preoccupied with death notices, how about being preoccupied with new born baby notices? probably not morbid enough
They will probably put taxes on it
So will it be http://www.deaths.gov? Or rip.gov?
Nobody has to pay anything for a death notice. It’s the families choice to publish it, nobody cares really.
have your say