Some people are posting like there is a choice not to cut public sector pay. Well what happens in another few months when no one is lending to Ireland, and all the (borrowed) money has run out? What do we pay the public sector with then?
I've mentioned on another thread that a possible solution would be to reverse every decision made by bertie ahern and his government. Reset the country back to 1996.
I am in favor of cutting public sector pay but not in favor of cutting public sector jobs.cut.
There's a big difference between Mortgage payments and interest rates..
There was a 15% cut in PS wages including the pension levy. Did grocery bills and fees fall much last year?
I am in favor of cutting public sector pay but not in favor of cutting public sector jobs.
Of course everyone must take a hit including those on welfare, but the fact remains the public sector salaries increased so much during the good years that these must now be reversed.The government "negotiating" with the unions is a pointless exercise as the unions will only agree to salary increases and negotiations aren`t needed for that.With peoples reduced spending power prices and fees will fall.
They can`t touch corporate tax rates unless one wants the multinationals to leave.
I see Ned o Keefe has got assurances that the old age pension won`t be cut...it wasn`t cut in the last budget either.Also the disabled sector /carers has been highlighted in Primetime so that will be treated sympathetically. Personally I don`t think they should be exceptions except in life or death situations. The OAP pensions should definetly be cut.
So if some public servants have no work to do or are doing work that is no longer needed, they should be left in situ until they reach retirement age?
My national school principle is regularly at work at 9pm-10pm at night. She is dealing with increasing demand and reduced resources. She is dealing with more and more children from families that don't speak English, more children with disabilities in mainstream schools. She's doing a fabulous job, and deserves every penny she gets. If you fancy her job, then feel free to apply the next time a post becomes vacant.We now have a situation where a senior engineer with an MNC working long hours and under a lot of pressure and no job security will have a similiar salary as a national school principal.Both will have to pay lots of extra income tax.I know which job I`d prefer.
But why would you limit this to public sector wages? If you want Govt intervention to bring down prices, just simply increase tax across the board, so everyone's wages will drop - then the prices will drop for everybody. This would be far more effective that just targeting one sector of the economy - right?Mortgage payments (interest rate) is already lower here.
The state is the biggest employer by far in this country. If wages in the PS are cut dramatically, rents. grocery bills & fees will have to fall as there is less money to pay for them.
But why would you limit this to public sector wages? If you want Govt intervention to bring down prices, just simply increase tax across the board, so everyone's wages will drop - then the prices will drop for everybody. This would be far more effective that just targeting one sector of the economy - right?
My national school principle is regularly at work at 9pm-10pm at night. She is dealing with increasing demand and reduced resources. She is dealing with more and more children from families that don't speak English, more children with disabilities in mainstream schools. She's doing a fabulous job, and deserves every penny she gets. If you fancy her job, then feel free to apply the next time a post becomes vacant.
I agree with Water Rates. Water is a precious resource that we are very luck to have and if we pay for it we will conserve it. It is also a service so you can see what you are getting.
Property Tax over my dead body!
What service would I get for that? I already provide accomodation for myself and my family by buying my own house and therefore not expecting the state (ie the rest of us) to provide me with accomodation. All that will happen here is we pay more tax to local government for them to remain inefficient. There are too many councillors pay too much, too many people employed in County Councils, how many planning staff have been let go? They cant have anything to do as no one is building anything.
And Ive a good friend in the public sector who tells me openly that the 2 most senior people in his office do no work and one of them spends the day examining the ceiling between pushing bits of paper around his desk.
We can all come up with extreme examples.
I've been round many parts of the public sector for five years, and I've never come across or heard of these scenarios, on or off the record.
Well what happens in another few months when no one is lending to Ireland, and all the (borrowed) money has run out? What do we pay the public sector with then?
What do we pay the public sector with then?
Can the last person to leave, please remember to switch off the lights?You can kiss goodbye to the low corperation tax too.
My national school principle is regularly at work at 9pm-10pm at night. She is dealing with increasing demand and reduced resources. She is dealing with more and more children from families that don't speak English, more children with disabilities in mainstream schools. She's doing a fabulous job, and deserves every penny she gets. If you fancy her job, then feel free to apply the next time a post becomes vacant.
But why would you limit this to public sector wages? If you want Govt intervention to bring down prices, just simply increase tax across the board, so everyone's wages will drop - then the prices will drop for everybody. This would be far more effective that just targeting one sector of the economy - right?
I agree with your point about what people deserve. Most people believe they deserve more for their work, but we can only get what our employer is able and willing to give us.Granted there are many low paid public service workers and of course their wages wouldn`t be reduced too much.But all the public service workers on 50k + and there are a lot of them should get their benchmarking reversed so they are earning what they were 10 or more years ago+.
These workers and their unions all demanded benchmarking when the government was flush...now that the government has to make cuts they don`t want to contemplate salary cuts. So what is the point of "negotiating " with the public sector unions.
You talk about your school principal working long hours and deserving every penny she gets.First there should be jobsharing for people like her for a pro rata rate. And as for " evey penny she gets she deserves". My point is no...there is only so much money to go around so she only deserves what the state can afford to pay her.
Posters here know I am in favor of job sharing and not job cuts because of our large amount of unemployed.
Actually they do. The minimum wage enforced by government is the single biggest burden to increasing employment. It also has a direct effect on wage rates and employment numbers in semi-skilled work.I am not in favor of the government intervening on the private sector wages and indeed they don`t and certainly not on prices of goods in the shops.
Please come and spend one day in the school, and then you can see that there are no excess resources, and in fact, they have been dramatically underresourced for many years.However, the problem with a blanket wage cut is that this results in those employees that we are most reliant on and that are doing the best job, like gards and nurses or the school principle mentioned, becoming disgruntled, while at the same time not getting rid of excess resources that were built up in the last 10 years.