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The Daily PollALMOST 58,000 Leaving Cert students are getting their results today.
The percentage of students receiving top marks in higher level Irish and Maths has risen this year, while the proportion of those getting A1s in English fell slightly.
One student has achieved nine A1s, eight got 8 A1s, while 215 others received the maximum 600 points with 6 A1s.
So today we’re asking: Were you happy with your Leaving Cert results?
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Great to see these workers stand up for each other and not back down under such severe pressure. Well done to all involved.
They did it for money and didn’t care who else jobs they jeopardised. Their are no hero’s here.
Economic reality hits union intransigence and worker stupidity.
Isnt this what they were offered by the labour court recommendation in the first place but went on unofficial strike anyway?
No, they were being offered 5 weeks last March! Strike with no wages for 14 weeks and than get 4 weeks redundancy instead of 5? Sounds like only one winner in this one.
I thought they were offered 15% paycut in lieu of redundancies… which would have saved jobs, but decided to burn it out as they don’t understand that the company needs to run at a profit and now its pretty much screwed.
The company wouldn’t be in financial trouble (if they are which I doubt) if they weren’t cheating customers the way they did Irish rail or being taken to court by the EPA for illegal practices etc. Bunch of crooks. I can’t believe so many people on here have taken the side of the dodgy gangster owners over the workers: http://www.shaneross.ie/category/consumer-affairs/page/8/
One crackpots comments on the interwebs doesn’t make it true. works that were shown up by there own greed. Unions are now defunct their age has come and gone
You think Shane Ross is a crack pot? One of the few Dail politicians with integrity and actually cares about the people, who has published and been found to be accurate on the corruption of the banks, politicians, and govt quangos. Unless of course you’re a banker Mark?
Your attack just reinforces my point that western big business has promoted an anti union sentiment in the west so they can drive down pay rates. If it hasn’t happened at your job yet, it will. It has at mine. Irish rail, for example, go after their employees every year tho they promised they wouldn’t ask for more pay cuts. And yet the board of directors gave themselves a 6% pay rise last year. I wish people would look into this stuff and start asking questions instead of allowing themselves to be manipulated like this.
The Labour Court told the two parties to sit and work out a way of making the savings through productivity and other means, no cut or pay off was suggested by the Labout Court. The lads turned up one day and were told if they clocked in they were accepting a 35% cut to their wages.
More champagne?
Go and consult Jean-Paul Sartre…maybe he can help?
No what strike it was a lockout ,strike means you have a choice ,lockout you don’t ,plain and simple .
Redundancy withdrawn by Buckley and then workers locked out ,watch rte news at six Tuesday and see the reason why “owner drivers” now watch him get did of the office staff ,no need for most of them now .
Well done to all the workers who stuck together, it is not an easy decision to choose to strike in the current climate, you stood together and you had the support of so many people. Thank god I can start putting my bins out again and not cart them to my mother who had a different disposal company.
You could have kept putting your bins out, they were all being collected.
Yes Paul they were being collected but by “scabs” which is why I didn’t put them out, also Greyhound didn’t get any collection money off me for 14 weeks. That’s how I supported the strikers.
Jane, you’re pretty awesome. #Solidarity
Jane, the different disposal company that your mother is using is paying their workers lower rates than the strikers are now on and don’t recognise the union so you were not really supporting workers. The best way to support the strikers now is to remain a greyhound customer so that they and all the other people working in the company can stay in their jobs.
Jane their fellow colleagues protested Againest the strike because there jobs were put at risk
Jane their fellow colleagues protested Againest the strike because there jobs were put at risk
As usual SIPTU try to shower themselves in glory. They sat back and let this happen.
The only winners in this are the customers who get to have their bins collected without being disrupted by thugs.
Do you’d gladly accept a 35% pay cut tomorrow? Hope your boss reads the journal so :)
I don’t have to accept a 35% wage cut as I am paid according to my current skillset. If I don’t like it I can go and get a qualification to increase my earning power, which I am doing currently, and use a thing called “personal accountability”.
Too late for me – I switched provider last week.
Aside from the way they treated their workers during this dispute, I can cite several reasons why.
- Sh!te service before and during the dispute. Ditto when dealing with their call centre. Bins often not collected on the specified day or late at night on the day.
- Extortionate and spurious charges – I paid €27 for one particular lift that I did not receive a satisfactory answer for. Funny that I was never “undercharged”.
- Greyhound should never have gotten the DCC contract in the first place. Instead of winning it by open tender, the auditors of Anglo (who themselves shouldn’t be getting public contracts due to their track record) recommended Greyhound. This stinks in itself.
- Greyhound have been caught dumping illegally.
- Greyhound swindled Irish Rail out of more than € 1million. This happened before they got the DCC contract. Strange criteria for winning public contracts.
- Greyhound is owned by tax-dodging tax-exiles
I have voted with my feet on Greyhound.
Good man Michael. We need to all be doing this. Investigating and finding out for ourselves what the real story is. We should be emailing TDs and going to marches when we can. We need to make Irish politicians as afraid of the people as they are in France.
Another champagne socialist…
Marcus, instead of playing the man and not the ball with your little ad hominem attack, please provide us with the evidence that directly contradicts the points I raised in my first post above.
Have Greyhound been falsely accused of dumping illegally and swindling Irish Rail? Is Greyhound not owned by tax exiles? Was the contract for DCC’s refuse collection won by Greyhound put out to tender in reality?
I’ll be waiting.
First of all I never said that any of these things never happened. I do think the use if the word “swindle” is very dramatic, as the money was paid back. “Swindle” implies intention…do you have facts to back up that claim?
I would also suggest you do your homework as Greyhound are not the only waste company to have these kind of issues. But all you want to focus your ire on is a very easy target.
I also object to is the constant wheeling out of Shane Ross articles when its quite clear he has a personal issue with this particular company.
Add to that your faux working class vitriol and it is rather pathetic…or is your other name Coddler O’Toole?
I await your reply…
Right Marcus, first of all, I’m glad you have acknowledged in your first sentence that my accusations against Greyhound aren’t untrue. You haven’t denied that Greyhound have engaged in illegal dumping, nor have you denied that there are serious reservations over the way they gained the refuse disposal contract from DCC. That’s a good start, even if you do still unwaveringly support them in spite of the evidence above.
But you do think the use “swindle” is overdramatic in reference to the €1.3 million they overcharged Irish Rail. They may have paid the money back, but it wasn’t until they were forced to do so, after the revelations of an Oireachtas committee that they did refund it. The fact that Irish Rail’s boss stated that there were “discrepancies between the amount invoiced [by Greyhound] and the actual work done” would be akin to a swindle in the eyes of most people with a properly functioning moral compass. If a tradesman charged me for work he hadn’t done, I would consider myself to have been swindled – I would suspect the majority of people would feel similarly aggrieved. Greyhound did this to the tune of €1.3 million.
Regarding your objection to myself and others posting the Shane Ross article repeatedly, perhaps your objection is, in reality, more your uncomfortable feeling that what he states in the article is the truth about Greyhound and that you have nothing to counter it with. If there is something untrue in the article, why not point it out to us? If it’s untrue, why not inform the lawyers of the Buckley brothers about a possible libel against them?
And if you think it’s only Shane Ross pursuing a personal vendetta against Greyhound, both the Sunday Business Post and Phoenix Magazine have published articles in recent months with the same basic conclusions about Greyhound as Ross. The only reason why they haven’t been posted here is because the SBP one is behind a paywall and the Phoenix one is hard copy only (4 July 2014 issue most recently, if you want to check for yourself). Greyhound haven’t taken out libel cases in relation to any of these articles. In addition, Shane Ross, the Sunday Independent, the SBP and Phoenix are about as far apart as it possible to get on the political spectrum, so it’s hardly a case of “champagne socialists” ganging up on Greyhound.
In further defence of Ross, his track record in exposing the malpractice and shenanigans in FAS, Eircom, etc. lend him a high degree of credibility in exposing similar issues with Greyhound. Justifiably, people sit up and take notice when he directs his attention to a particular organisation.
Now, if you think any of that analysis is “faux working class vitriol” you clearly don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ll put it down to the arrogance of youth and the misplaced moral certainties and judgements that it brings.
Well done to all the workers who withstood enormous pressure from employers media and politicians with a very few exceptions. Personally I will never use a refuse company again as I am fortunate to be located close to a ‘ a bring all centre ‘ and as far as I know operated by DCC. The families of these workers went through a hell of a time and having to watch ‘scab labour’ operating the trucks on the streets was sickening was a reminder of the 1913 lockout. As always the media covered themselves in glory again by showing that their reporting was anti worker.
The workers stood up against this brutal management something we don’t see much of nowadays hope things works out for them
So 13 of them will remain on existing wages because they are working on the Dublin City contract… Does this mean the taxpayer is footing the 35% extra in wages for the social housing service?
That sounds to me like that group of employees will be handed back to the council when the contract is up and the taxpayer will fund their higher wages, meaning you and I
Im glad these guys kept their jobs and are back to work cos they really showed their colours outside the courts! Most of those striking were bad ass and rotten to the core!! Id have hated to have seen them end up on comfy welfare!! Keep them working so they don’t have time to act out the bad breeding inside!
What workers outside the court , the only greyhound workers the court were the ones bused in by Buckley ,oh guess what the state will be paying the workers as Mr Buckley has said he is only going to have owner drivers ,no employees surprise surprise
Great to see the workers back at their jobs it took a lot of courage to go outside the gate also it may show the unions that they won’t put up with bullying tactics
Most of them are not back at their jobs Alan, over 40 of them are being made redundant and with all that has gone on over the last few months they will probably find it impossible to get jobs in that industry again. Not exactly a victory for the strikers.
Are people involved in waste not wasters?
Does this now mean the scabs will get the sack !!!!! Hurray
They cant get the sack as they were on contract, not employees. There will always be work out there for people willing to a days graft so I am sure they will move on to the next contract and keep working.
I assume these agency workers will continue to work there as the striking workers appear to have what they want:
“50 workers will leave the company, availing of an improved redundancy package”
http://www.herald.ie/news/greyhound-pay-row-ends-with-staff-deal-30606999.html
Yes but there always scabs. So come down off your donkey you idiot. If it wasn’t for strikers you wouldn’t have any rites in the work place. The unions of old stood up for worker. These guys going from job to job are no good to anybody
Most of them have taken redundancy so they will end up on the welfare being supported by you and me.
I am sure that some people do and some people don’t. Does not concern me really, particularly with the level of intellect portraed in your own post, very grown up altogether. Have you anything useful to contribute to the conversation? Any opinions on the substantive issue perhaps? Would be far more useful to the discussion than what you have posted above.
The thing that surprises me is the lack of any comment or debate on the issue, from either side. I have followed it from the start and it seems to have died with a whimper. What do you thing oh wise one?
Why are you replying to your own post?
I was replying to a post from Karl who told me to go away, in fairly impolite terms, said that nobody had any interest in my opinion and that I should leave this forum to grown ups. Unfortunately he did not have anything meaningful to add. They deleted his post, presumably as offensive although there was no bad languade (plenty of asterisks) and it didn’t bother me.
The great thing for me about this kind of forum is the right to free speech, whichever side of the fence you sit on. I might disagree with lots of the opinions on here but I will always respect any posters right to their opinion, unless it is racist or nasty against an individual or group, and I will never knock them unless I think they have their facts wrong. I have got my facts wrong on a few occasions myself and am always ready to hold my hands up when I do.
78 workers out, Buckley only allowed 24 back, what choice do they have?
So, Greyhound won !
Typical comment from you. WATP ;)
Why did someone delete Karl’s lovely post? he is entitled to his opinion, regardless of abusive content.
He may be entitled to his opinion but the Journal don’t have to host it, particularly if it’s abusive or defamatory.
31 Comments on this post and “Paul Murray” has accounted for 9 of them??
(Mostly talking $hite)
Employed by greyhound maybe???
Smells rotten from a neutral point of view, who was genuinely interested in the article
Don’t like the truth so accuse the guy of being a Greyhound troll…figures.
All Paul has done is do some research…why don’t you try the same?
10 out of 46 now Stephen. Is there a problem with me posting or is it just because you probably disagree with my opinions?
Would be happy to stand corrected on anything that I have posted that is not correct (or as you phrase it so pleasantly “Mostly talking $hite”) and would be happier if you would post something constructive rather than knocking someone who has taken a genuine interest in this story since the start of the dispute, as anyone who has followed this will see many posts from me over the months.
And just to confirm for the umpteenth time no I am not employed by Greyhound nor do I know anyone who works there, my only connection to them is as a customer in south Dublin. Funny how everyone who posts anything that does not support the workers is variously described as being employed or paid off by greyhound or being a troll, maybe people are just interested in some informed debate and don’t agree with you??
The truth is out , straight from Michael Buckleys mouth as reported by Ingrid Miley on the six one news on Monday ,
When asked if the agency workers would be given jobs now in Greyhound , he said he was going to use “owner drivers” Looks like he was trying to get rid of all the paye staff,as the workers claimed .
Audrey, what is wrong with using self employed “owner drivers”? Surely the company can use whoever they want to do the work, why do you make it sound like some great hidden secred has been uncovered?
Seperately, I have been posting back and forward with you for a few months so I hope that all works out for you and your family in the future, you are certainly one of the more balanced and reasonable posters on here, even if I do disagree with you on most things!! Nothing ever intended to be personal, we can agree to differ and hopefully wish each other well as human beings.
have your say