The other side of Michael D Higgins


What about the second largest representative bodies? or the third, or the tenth or the 100th? How big does a vested interest group have to be for you to be ok with it doing what we elect the government to do?
 
The big problems with social partnership are twofold
- the first and only allegiance of each 'social partner' is to their constituency, not to the general good of the country/
- the 'social partners' are unaccountable to the general populace. This leads to guys like David Begg sitting on the board of the Central Bank, proving neither capable nor willing to expose the wrongdoing there, and yet riding off unscathed into the sunset back to his day job as soon as the merde hits the fan. At least the public got their chance to oust the politicians. Their social partnership cronies were untouchable, and remain so.
 
Purple said:
What about the second largest representative bodies? or the third, or the tenth or the 100th? How big does a vested interest group have to be for you to be ok with it doing what we elect the government to do?
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The number of representational bodies to be involved in the social partnership model has always been a Government decision.

We elect Government to govern & if they deem it necessary to introduce a social partnership model then it is incumbent on them to choose the most representative bodies for employers & employees both - did they do so - yes.

In the absence of social partnership pay negotiations would have been on a free for all basis & days lost to industrial disputes would have equalled or exceeded those lost pre 1987 - the days lost to industrial disputes still remain amongst the lowest in Europe.
 
Complainer said:
We're actually stuck with lots of public servants being [broken link removed] and working their asses off to cope with increasing demand and reduced resources.
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thats odd, 'cos I see people around me every day earning well above the average industrial wage doing sweet damn all and in a lot of cases, they're incapable of doing anything meaningful for various reasons. But they cannot be let go, get regraded downwards, take a wage cut etc in the bad times, thus the cost of public services to the public remain high
 

Well, I'm not quite sure that I'd give "what you see all around you" quite the same weight as an OECD report, but leaving that aside, where are all these people do sweet damn all? What specific organisations / departments are they working in?
 
Complainer said:
Well, I'm not quite sure that I'd give "what you see all around you" quite the same weight as an OECD report, but leaving that aside, where are all these people do sweet damn all? What specific organisations / departments are they working in?
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Of course the OECD would see a lot more of whats happening on the ground...from their suites in the Merrion hotel!!!
 
Delboy said:
Of course the OECD would see a lot more of whats happening on the ground...from their suites in the Merrion hotel!!!
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They probably never even landed in Ireland. But they did see more in their spreadsheets of comprehensive data than you'll see in a month of Sundays.

But leaving that aside, where are all these people doing sweet damn all? What specific organisations / departments are they working in?
 
aye, whatever!

I've worked in several Public Service organisations as well as several private sector companies, large and small. So I've seen both sides of the divide and some of the wages paid in the Public Service are off the wall, for menial made up tasks....simply because of annual increments which as we know are a right, and are not earned
 
So I guess we're not going to get a specific answer to " where are all these people doing sweet damn all? What specific organisations / departments are they working in?"
 
Damn right! I'm not naming where I work!!!
You seem to know quiet a bit about the civil/public service....ask around and I'm sure you'll find similar examples
 
Complainer said:
So I guess we're not going to get a specific answer to " where are all these people doing sweet damn all? What specific organisations / departments are they working in?"
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Are you really living in this country???

Have you been speaking to anyone in HSE backoffices recently? I have heard reports from a few people working in different areas around the country that morale is at an all-time low and that people who worked very hard (including unpaid overtime) in the past are not bothering any more because they feel that they were foolish to do so at the time when others were doing nothing and getting promoted over them.

There are also similar reports emanating from Gardai whose superiors are retiring en masse leaving their organisational structures in poor nick, and who feel that this, coupled with the force's prehistoric technology setup (eg Gardai having to drive 10-20 miles to enter info on PULSE) and curbs on Garda overtime, are preventing them from doing their job properly. Hence its easier just to do the minimum and stay our of trouble.
 
Delboy said:
Damn right! I'm not naming where I work!!!
You seem to know quiet a bit about the civil/public service....ask around and I'm sure you'll find similar examples
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So just to be clear, the only specific examples of people 'doing sweet damn all' are in your own organisation - right?
T McGibney said:
Are you really living in this country???
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Yes, living in this country, working full-time in the public sector in role that has regular contact with HSE backoffice folk, local authority folk, central Department folk and and other agency folk.

I don't disagree with parts of your post. In all fairness, doing the minimum is in a very different league to doing 'sweet damn all' as Delboy alleges. If people are doing the minimum, who could blame them, after four years of salary cuts, resource cuts, and being pilloried every time they open a newspaper or turn on the radio.

But to be very honest, that's not what I encounter most days of my working life. I see people working their asses off including unpaid overtime, flexitime way over the monthly threshold, not taking annual leave, and coping with reduced resources to continue to provide the highest quality public services they can possibly manage.
 
The basic problem is that longstanding morale in the public service has been shattered, and like Humpty Dumpty, is nigh on impossible to put back together again without sweeping changes across the board, starting at the top. The political and administrative will to make those changes seems not to be there.

Complainer said:
In all fairness, doing the minimum is in a very different league to doing 'sweet damn all' as Delboy alleges.
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No, its not. Have you ever seen an organisation manage to carry out its basic functions effectively while staff are on effective 'work to rule'?


Do you mind me turning around your earlier question and asking you where are all these people 'working their asses off' and 'doing unpaid overtime'? What specific organisations / departments are they working in? The feedback I am getting is that this is a thing of the past.
 
T McGibney said:
The basic problem is that longstanding morale in the public service has been shattered, and like Humpty Dumpty, is nigh on impossible to put back together again without sweeping changes across the board, starting at the top.
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Fully agree.

T McGibney said:
No, its not. Have you ever seen an organisation manage to carry out its basic functions effectively while staff are on effective 'work to rule'?
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Again, I'd see 'doing the minimum' as a bit different to effective 'work to rule'. Neither of them are very pretty, but if everyone on staff is 'doing the minimum', then the overall organisation is 'doing the minimum'. Minimum isn't great, but it is the minimum.

A few examples spring to mind - Dublin City Libraries, continuing to improve access to library services with reduced budgets and resources - Revenue IT groups and customer services groups, continuing to improve customer services with reduced resources - Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Arts and Events team - continuing to provide great, free public events for all, like the Samhain Spooky Walk in Marlay Park over Halloween that attracted thousands of families, Railway Procurement Agency, continuing to develop improvements to the Luas service and the planned interconnect, having gone through a round of voluntary redundancies and possibly facing into compulsory redundancies shortly, depending on Govt decisions, many VECs round the country are continuing to provide existing services and some expanded services, while managing mergers, closure of Traveller training centres.
 

Yes, th walk in Marlay Park, the one with the 1 hour queue... yes, that was great but yes, there are some great services provided by public bodies. The question is could they be delivered just as well or better for less?
 
Complainer said:
So just to be clear, the only specific examples of people 'doing sweet damn all' are in your own organisation - right?
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Nope, I've seen it in all the public service organisations I've worked in. Some people do nothing, some do very little....there is a good sized cohort who work well and hard, and then there are a group who are under serious pressure and work long hours. All go up the increments scale each year regardless until they reach the top of that scale.

But those that do nothing can't get fired. They have issues or problems that the company has to work around and so they are given relatively easy or even made up tasks (internal post, filing/sorting etc) even if these task are'nt really a 7hr day job. But they still draw a full wage, which after 10 or 15 years of service, puts them well ahead of the average industrial wage in this country from what I've seen.
The people who do very little...well your better off a lot of the time carrying out the task yourself rather than asking them to take it on. You'd be just as long checking it afterwards in any case to see are the results right. They just want to clock in and out, work to the letter of their job role, and sit out their years till retirement.

I always think of the ESB plant in Rhodes in Offaly that shut down but the workers stayed on!!! They sat there for over a year playing pool and making tea, refusing to move to new roles within ESB until an agreement (more compensation on top fo what they already were due to get for the move) was reached. it just would'nt be tolerated within the private sector...and it should'nt be tolerated by the public either as it adds to the cost of their public services.

Now this is'nt a simple black and white case, but it illustrates what I believe to be a common attitude amongst workers in the public service....the organisations exist to serve the employees first and the public second. And thats my experience as I stated in previous posts.

So I don't see why anyone on here should be getting personal with me over this or demand that I name where I work or have worked. It's what I've encountered and still see every day. There are good people and bad people in all companies/organisations....but at least in the private sector, the danger of losing your jobs acts as a reality call to some people who would otherwise be prone to 'drifting' through their career...in my opinion, of course!
 

I don't want to belittle any particular work group here but you're not exactly comparing like with like here.

For example VEC staff may well be under pressure in some respects but equally their workload is smaller, for example they no longer administer third level grant applications.

Revenue have improved their IT functions but some aspects of these (eg ROS registration, Securemail) are still riddled with problems, of which their technical staff generally seem blissfully unaware, and new procedures introduced this year mean that it is now more difficult for an accounting firm to file an online tax return for a new client than it was a year ago.

And, while I like and appreciate my local library, I have yet to see anyone 'working their ass off' there.
 
T McGibney said:
I don't want to belittle any particular work group here but you're not exactly comparing like with like here.
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I'm not comparing anything. I'm answering the question that you asked.

T McGibney said:
For example VEC staff may well be under pressure in some respects but equally their workload is smaller, for example they no longer administer third level grant applications.
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I'm talking about frontline VEC staff who had no involvement in administering grants.


T McGibney said:
And, while I like and appreciate my local library, I have yet to see anyone 'working their ass off' there.
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Because like the duck swimmiing, the real work goes on out of public sight.

So what's the outcome - until EVERY single aspect of EVERY single public service is working PERFECTLY at ZERO cost, then no public servant can say that they are working their asses off?
 
Complainer said:
So what's the outcome - until EVERY single aspect of EVERY single public service is working PERFECTLY at ZERO cost, then no public servant can say that they are working their asses off?
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Where did I say that? You cited Revenue IT as 'continuing to improve customer services' as evidence of their staff 'working their asses off'. I just pointed out my own and other accountants' experience that their customer services have disimproved.
 
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