Sit In at the Passport Office

jhegarty said:
I think it would mean us putting up a proper border with passport controls between here and the north.
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That is not really true, the Schengen agreement allows to maintain bilateral Agreements with neighbouring third countries for the purpose of implementing a local border traffic regime.

We could join Schengen Travel Area, enforce the Schengen rules for people coming from outside the Schengen area and still have a bilateral agreement with the UK. In fact we already have permission from the other countries to join most of the Schengen agreement, we just never enacted them.

It’s time to make the decision if travel without passport to the UK (for Irish citizens) is more important than travel to the other EU/EEA countries without border controls.

And let’s face it, with the exception of land traffic between the north and south we effectively maintain a control of our borders. If you land at an airport you are subject to border control, even if you come from London.

It’s just that the English don’t control you when you fly in from Ireland and treat you as a domestic flight. Ireland already treats you as foreign flight and controls it’s borders.

Let’s safe some money and reduce the border control to outside Schengen and redeploy the officers to some other area where they can are used.
 
The problem is the Brits would have to agree with such a move DublinTexas, otherwise it would effectively mean them joining the Schengen area by proxy.
 
Off topic posts and posts consisting of an entire quote of an earlier post (+1) have been deleted.




aj
moderator
 
hmm ideas that the passport office could implement that would annoy their employer but not affect the general public;

- cancel all the FF TD's passports (not sure how viable this is but could be looked into!), would certainly save money on junkets
- put all passport applications requested by TDs to the bottom of the 50,000 applications (this would surely annoy one government minister who i have read makes good use of the service)
- protest outside the minister for foreign affairs/transport house, possibly at all hours during the night for maximum inconvenience
- attend FF clinics and waste all the TDs clinic time by complaining about working conditions/pay cuts
- Spam politicians facebook pages (bit juvenile I know but it is annoying)

I am sure there are countless other things passport office workers could do on their own time to protest instead of annoying the rest of the nation.

At this point though I think the government will be criticised more if they back down than if they give in, so this action really is pointless. The unions have lost the general public and are on their own now, if they persist with a strike action I can see the government just looking elsewhere for passport provision and then the protesters will have lost not only their protest but possibly their jobs.
 
RonanC said:
Given the fact that the majority of those represented by the CPSU are low paid public servants, the only avenue we have is to withdraw our labour and as a consequence the public will be affected.

If you have any other suggestion i'd be delighted to hear them because I for one do not want to strike. I want to work, I want to provide a service, but I also want to be paid fairly and treated equally (reffering to my comments on the reversal of pay cuts for higher paid public servants)
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If things are so bad working in the public sector you could always resign and get a job somewhere else.

Oh crikey, I forgot, there are hardly any other jobs elsewhere as the 400000 people on the dole (many of whom I'm sure would love to be in your shoes at the minute ) know

If the issue is about being "treated equally", does that mean that if the paycuts at higher levels were reintroduced(BTW and in fairness, I do think they should), the CPSU would stop all actions? Or is that just a smokescreen?
 
How can the union also justify blocking the recruitment of 50 temporary workers to deal with normal seasonal demand, never mind the backlog. And now they close social welfare counters. So much for social fairness and equality.

The whole thing is stupid and has completely backfired on the CPSU. The Government is now in a stronger position than ever to drive through their agenda.
 
+1 Sunny

Also what happened to not escalating the dispute while in talks with LRC. Clearly the social welfare counters is an escalation.
 
Sunny said:
The whole thing is stupid and has completely backfired on the CPSU.
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It is not only the CPSU that will suffer. All other public servants will be affected.
If there is another pay cut this year there will be no sympathy, even though many public sector employees (in my area anyway) are going about the job in a professional manner.
 
Shawady said:
It is not only the CPSU that will suffer. All other public servants will be affected.
If there is another pay cut this year there will be no sympathy, even though many public sector employees (in my area anyway) are going about the job in a professional manner.
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I agree. The problem is that work to rule in the current economic climate just looks immature, pitiful and vindictive. The staff would have been better off announcing they are going on strike action for 1 day a week. Of course that doesn't suit because they want to in engage in industrial action while still getting paid.

By all accounts, the politicians are amazed at the public anger at the trade unions. Really was an own goal.
 
Capt. Beaky said:
Do as Regan did with the Air Traffic Control strikers.
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You mean we should lie to them?
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]A Reagan Letter to Robert Poli, PATCO (Oct. 20, 1980)[/FONT]​

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Dear Mr. Poli:[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif] I have been briefed by members of my staff as to the deplorable state of our nation's air traffic control system. They have told me that too few people working unreasonable hours with obsolete equipment has placed the nation's air travellers in unwarranted danger. In an area so clearly related to public safety the Carter administration has failed to act responsibly.[/FONT]​

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif] You can rest assured that if I am elected President, I will take whatever steps are necessary to provide our air traffic controllers with the most modern equipment available and to adjust staff levels and work days so that they are commensurate with achieving a maximum degree of public safety....[/FONT]​

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif] I pledge to you that my administration will work very closely with you to bring about a spirit of cooperation between the President and the air traffic controllers.[/FONT]​
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Sincerely,[/FONT]​

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Ronald Reagan[/FONT]​
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Look on the bright side , the CSPU have scored a major own goal.

The unions have been weakend.

The public/civil service performance is being highlighted to the public.

The militancy and stalemate of the unions has been brought to the fore.

We now will see a government who will have to be strong,and if not they will be very/even more exposed.

The unions are being seen in a very bad light by the public and maybe by the PS a,lso by disallowing them to do overtime (less money) by blocking the employment of the 50 temp staff ( so much for unions wanting people to get jobs).

The unions,it would appear have guided their members in the wrong direction.

The PS will see now that the unions are being way too militant.

The Thatcher won ,is slowly but surely dawning on all .

Look forward to seeing the union back down,and how they will do this.
 
Howitzer said:
Nice. When people start eulogising Reagan and Thatcher you know we're in trouble. Do you have a link to the original?
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In fairness to Reagan (and I can't believe I'm saying that:eek:), the controllers were breaking US Federal Law by striking.
 
I was listening to RTE radio this morning in the car and a representative from the CSPU was on and he was saying the passport office workers are very low paid and that they will go on strike unless the cuts are reversed. He gave one example of a man who is earning €1600 per month and has a mortgage of €1400 per month.
It was this man's choice to get the mortgage - I feel sorry for him but it annoys me when I hear this thrown out as a reason to go on strike. I didn't buy because I couldn't afford it. Surely they must realise that they will get very little public sympathy for this strike?
 
I find that very hard to believe!

Are they saying that they managed perfectly well before the paycuts,with that size mortgage and what was left of his income?

Anyone stupid enough to get a morgage of 1400e leaving themselves with 200 e a month deserves what they get.

Even if this person was down by 400e a month ,which I doubt ,since the pay cuts it would still only leave them with 600 e a month to live on.Bad decision.

I would imagine that the mortgage is a joint mortgage and in fact he is not left with just 200 e a month.

Even if it were true ,he could renegotiate with his bank.

Its these kind of outrageous claims that leave us finding anything they say,very hard to believe
 
I think the unions know the government can't rollback the cuts as the money simply isn't there. The focus of these strikes IMO is to make it more difficult for the gov to introduce further cuts if they need to.
 
DeeFox said:
I was listening to RTE radio this morning in the car and a representative from the CSPU was on and he was saying the passport office workers are very low paid...
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This makes me smile.

What exactly is "very low paid" and by what criteria? Can anyone confirm exactly what they earn? What's the bets it will not fall under "very low paid" anyway - whatever that is.

It might fall under "I want more" all right but that's a different story.

Everyone has a gripe and every gripe may appear legitimate until it is quantified.
 
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