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AS THE GOVERNMENT prepares to meet trade unions today, one union has vowed to oppose any cuts brought to the table.
Yesterday, talks began on an extension of the Croke Park Agreement, with pay and pensions in the public sector examined by representatives of 26 worker groups.
The Government is looking to save €300 million this year, and €1 billion over three years by agreeing on significant changes to working conditions and pay.
Trade union
The UNITE trade union represents 5,000 public sector workers and has vowed to oppose the cuts tabled at today’s meeting between trade unions and the Government.
It said that the only way out of current decline is “through fostering growth, maintaining jobs and bringing the failed policies of austerity to an overdue end”.
UNITE Regional Secretary Jimmy Kelly commented:
The Croke Park agreement has saved €1.5 billion according to the implementation body. Part of the original deal was that the wages of low paid workers would be restored once savings were made. The latest ideas though include reducing further the wages of starters in nursing and other areas.
This is an attack on the dignity of work and the respect in which public services are held.
Kelly added that UNITE is entering the talks “to end the downsizing of essential public services, to restore wage fairness for low paid workers, to resist the creation of lower new entrants’ pay scales and to create genuine reform driven by employees”.
He said that if agreement is not reached, UNITE will “take whatever industrial steps are necessary to protect public services for all and the interests of our members”.
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You either have job cuts or you have pay cuts. Take your pick. We don’t have the money to sustain the wages bill so these are your options. You go away and decide which.
There you go Government, that’s how you negotiate with the Unions. Put the ball back in their court.
Job cuts. Let’s start by shedding all the dead admin wood from frontline services and The Dáil. Let’s cut the salaries to bankers in Nationally Owned Institutions who are paid over €100,000 and abolish performance related bonuses when their performance is nothing short of abysmal….
Neil Blair that is a ridiculous view to have. However many jobs you cut in the public sector you will just add to the length of the dole queue which will cost the taxpayer to fund plus redundancies packages which will cost again. Any redundancies would be at the lower end of the pay scale, taking money off normal joe soap and out of the economy straight into some bond holders back pocket. Job cuts are not the way, get real!
But banks and their workers can continue in without a euro cut, let’s not forget they are public sector now too… Ad should be targeted for savings :)
Speaking as a teacher, we have had both Neil. We have had an average 17% pay reduction since Jan 2009. A little side heading that the government are reluctant to ever mention are the job losses in education as a result of the rise in pupil teacher ratio, cuts to SNAs, reduction in DEIS teacher allocations and the incorporation of guidance counselling into the schools’ pupil-teacher ratio. All told, it is estimated that there have been approximately 3,000 job losses in education since the austerity agenda began.
Nothing like public sector / union talk to get your fired up in the morning…
The white coat image attached to the article is slightly misleading I’m afraid, as Unite do not have a license to negotiate on behalf of doctors….more’s the pity!!!
That’s the psychiatrist, getting ready to lead all those stupid enough to pay union fees, away.
All doctors who paid subs to the IMO are voluntarily presenting themselves to psychiatric institutions around the country. It’ll be the next bed crisis….
I had to permanently place my gmail chat on invisible mode to prevent my civil servant friends from attempting to chat to me all the time. It’s like they have nothing better to do. I say, leave the front line alone and initiate big cuts for desk jockeys.
Couldn’t agree more
Unions get my BILE ducts moving…………
Nothing like seeing an article 1st thing in the morning and filling up with hulk style rage
unions rejecting cuts before they see them .. Wouldnt expect anything less. No consideration forthw countrys current state
Correct me if I’m wrong Jay but the proposed cuts & changes in work practices were out lined to the unions yesterday?
They were goven the proposed cuts but what normally happens whats proposed and what actually gets agreed is all dont today but unite have said they will reject ANY. Cuts
Sorry Jay. If we are to be a little pedantic then maybe UNITE would be better off saying any MORE cuts. There have been quite a few.
Simple as this if the governments spending is more than its revenue adjustments need to be made and will continue to be made untill its spending is less than its intake. If your not mature enough to see that thats fair enough but like it or not the ps wage bill is unsustainable and needs serious reducing ( wit as little effect to front line services as possible)
I agree Jay. Revenue adjustments have to be made. There is waste in the public sector which needs to be rooted out. Revenue adjustments aren’t all about cuts to public expenditure. The wealthiest 10% have seen a rise in their income during this recession while everyone else has seen their income reduce. The wealthy in this country have had a number of loopholes to hide their wealth and pay a less effective tax rate than middle income earners. Some economists like to point to the statistic that the wealthy pay the majority of tax in Ireland. What they don’t talk about is proportionality. The wealthiest 10% contribute proportionately less than a middle income earner in Ireland. Even the forthcoming property tax is designed in such a way that those who own more valuable houses will contribute proportionately less than a middle income home owner. And the argument that higher taxes on the wealthy will drive away investment is devoid of any sense as investment in this country in terms of jobs and infrastructure is not significant enough to justify this argument.
What the top 10% of the country make. Or their sucessive pay scale bares no relavence to me as long as its not paid out of my taxes the issue at hand is unioin has said its refusing to even discuss cuts today … The ps waste is in every part of it admin after admin after admin 30000 administerators in the hse to a population of 4m … I font belive people should loose their jobs but if you can see that thats to excessive and reductions in pay or increase in hours will soften the blow of the excess well then i have no chance of getting through to you
Jay, the very premise of your argument falls down on the following point; you are paying directly in the case where there is not proportionality in the tax take of a country. If a particular group don’t pay their fare share, e.g. the wealthiest 10%, other groups must make up the shortfall, e.g the lower and middle income earners. I bring it back to my point about revenue adjustment. It cannot all be on the expenditure side.
So if you are correct in what you suggest what should we do with the top 10%
I would suggest implementing a mechanism, (as I’m not an economist, I wouldn’t know what nature the mechanism would take) that would ensure that the wealthiest 10% pay an effective tax rate of 50%, (which is only 8% more than the effective tax rate of a middle income earner). I would ensure, insofar as possible, that all loopholes which allowed the wealthy to syphon off their income in order to avoid paying tax were closed. I’m not against wealth, I’m against greed. Wealth which is earned and put to the use of society is good, wealth which is there for the sake of it only ensures that somebody else has to pay. I would also look at waste in the public sector. Things like long service allowances/increments, duplication of positions, refusal to retrain or up skill, days off for the monarchy, time off to cash cheques, nonsense like that. I’m simply saying that cuts are only one side of the balance sheet. You have to raise revenue fairly and equitably.
You aay your not against wealth but realistically you clearly are ive no problem with people making money ans if they make more than me i dont expect them penalised for it and increasing the tax bracket like that wouldnt generate the savings you need..
Do you know the private sector would march side by side with the public sector id the public sector would march against its own waste and last of productivity but how it looks from te outside looking in is the ps workers that work hard dont have much of a problem with the lazy and waste ad overspend as yous dot fight against it
As a British trade union Unite has consistently opposed every social partnerhsip agreement since 1987. Their agenda is set by a militant British ideology that has its roots in 1970s adversarialism. It may have escaped Unite’s attention but their opposition to the government’s plans to cut public sector wages and ultimately services did not stop the last round of cuts nor will it stop the next round. Incidently, for all those taking glee at the prospect of further cuts to public servants pay and conditions, be warned, the cuts will affect public services.
Unite didn’t exist in 1987, or even 1997, but do carry on.
It will affect public services insofar as lazy public servants will become even lazier
Blah, blah, blah. Another day of over paid shapers!! If the Unions think austerity is not working then do something about it.
Just imagine how things might be, if we had real people in charge. Men and Women with the moral courage to do what it takes to get Ireland back on its feet. All this shower of cowards have been able to do so far is decimate the earnings of graduate teachers and nurses. Why are they scared to take on those at the top? Real savings could be achieved, and the people taking the hits would still be able to have a standard of living, most of us can only dream about!
I think it’s because they have to rub shoulders/work with these people and we can’t have uncomfortable social situations can we?
Well realistically any cut from the top would be symbolic as it wouldnt generate much revenue an all out overhaul off the administration end of the public service is whats needed and a complete overhaul of the pay scale
The public sector is not this big evil machine of lazy bastards. There are many good people working there, many of whom are not being paid enough for the work they are doing.
Unfortunately there are a group of people who are being paid way too much for lack of doing anything productive at all.
The trade unions need to take the initiative here to weed out those that are dragging the entire service down, which in turn is making the lives of their good hard-working members more difficult. Fundamentally I think unionised labour is not bad, but only if the union takes responsibility for the productivity of it’s members. Membership of a union should not be based merely on union dues.
I’d love to know the full story behind the pensions program, and why they Govt. cannot modify it. I have no problem with the concept of a job for life, if the person performs that job well. I do have a problem with a pay-packet for life, regardless of what type of job the person did, and the extraordinary pensions for senior civil servants.
I await with interest (but not baited breath) the outcomes of these meetings and the reaction to those outcomes.
Oh no. Cust to the public service. Whose going to keep the memes going around facebook while the rest of us are working?
Hmmm while you sit on thejournal.ie?!
Not all of us have cushy 9-5 desk jobs Marian.
9 to 5 cushy desk jobs? You mean like nurses and Gardai and paramedics? Think before you type Jim
No, like Marian Leydon who assumed that I was at work based solely on the time of day…
yeah, there’s nothing worse than someone making assumptions based on no evidence
Back to your point about memes so…..
That’s the spirit UNITE
I presume you are being sarcastic?
Very much so
Well I have to say I’m happy unite are taking a stand. The only union with a bit of back bone. We need more from the other unions, especially with this house tax water malarkey kicking off in a few months.
public sector negotiating with public sector to decide how much to pay themselves…. you couldn’t make it up!!!
get some private sector workers in there to negotiate with the unions and see how far they get.
Or how about the workers of both private and public sector unions unite against the greed that is driving this austerity agenda?
I feel that avoiding public sector wage cuts will provide a reference for what wages we expect in Ireland after the recession. Yes, private sector wages have been reduced. But we all hope this is a temporary measure and wages will start increasing again soon. Remember though, there’s no guarantee of that. Private enterprise probably see it as an opportunity to reduce wages permanently and improve their profitability. That will be easy if private sector wages are in line with the public sector; that will become the national norm. Whereas that will be more difficult if the public sector is being paid systematically more.
Not to mention that by avoiding wage cuts, the average citizen will have more cash in hand to spend at consumer level. Which is essentially the cornerstone of the anti-austerity economic model.
Finally, where would you rather the money go? If not the public sector then…. welfare? Bondholders? Do you actually want to cut public sector wages for the good of the country, or out of spite?
The money would not “go” anywhere else. It would just mean that the government needs to borrow less to fund the running of the country.
Fine, but that’s what austerity is. If you want the government to make cuts so it doesn’t have to borrow as much, you want austerity. Whereas if you want to government to spend money to boost the economy, then you should oppose public sector wage cuts. Both are valid positions, but you can’t oppose austerity and support wage cuts because that doesn’t make any sense.
Am I reading that article right, UNITE are coming to the talks hoping to increase the pay of public/civil servant workers while at the same time hoping to agree an increase in the staff numbers??? I cant believe what I’m reading, how out of touch is this man with reality, seems not to have heard our boom has gone bust and we are taking loans to pay the wages of this ridiculously large public service! Crazy to think that this mentality exists and surely over the next few months we will all suffer as, no doubt, strike action will be called. Madness!
“Unite vows to oppose pubic sector cuts”
“Unite vows to public sector cuts” was the original headline…or something similar, my head is fuzzy, i have indigestion….burp..
what a headline…………………..
It was fixed within a minute or two – an unfortunate typo!
did the union get on to you…lol
Ha! No, I spotted it myself almost immediately afterwards.
Aoife
Please tell me what the typo was. I have one idea in me head and I’m really hoping…
“oppose” was missing from the headline…..
I better not say what I was hoping but it wasn’t that, although well worth a chuckle!
I missed that AL – What was it?
have your say