How safe are public service jobs?

venice said:
I don't think you can head-butt you boss either but not sure, its a gray area
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Hmmmmm..... not sure on that one either. I'd say no head-butting.... but then again.... not sure


Know someone who went from private sector to civil service about a year ago. She thought it was a wind up. Maybe she was just being given time to find her feet but she was told to relax, do a few courses to fill the day and she'd get used to the new pace of life after 6 months or so




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HouseOfCards said:
Hmmmmm..... not sure on that one either. I'd say no head-butting.... but then again.... not sure


Know someone who went from private sector to civil service about a year ago. She thought it was a wind up. Maybe she was just being given time to find her feet but she was told to relax, do a few courses to fill the day and she'd get used to the new pace of life after 6 months or so




.
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Or maybe the idiot who told her that is the kind of lazy w*nker who gives all civil servants a bad name.
 
Comes down to where you are. I moved a couple of years back private to public, and where I am I'm always busy. More work than is possible to do. The main difference is I don't have to work stupid hours to earn some else a bonus. Some of that is down the age profile. The average age is much older in the public sector, at least where I am, so theres a more mature approach to work. But I don't think its the same everywhere.
 
I moved last year from private to public. I still have enough work to keep me occupied every day, but I do not have a mad scramble to get everything done within the working day. In the private sector, I felt my job was a joke. I worked very hard, yet could barely get all my work covered, despite doing 45 hours a week (I was only paid for 39) It got to the stage where I got very stressed and hated going to work.

Now I feel I have got my life back again. I enjoy going to work, but I also enjoy my weekends and annual leave. I feel I am able to switch off fully during the evenings and weekends. The working day is much shorter too, 35 hours, where I get all my proper lunch breaks etc.
 
buzybee said:
I moved last year from private to public. I still have enough work to keep me occupied every day, but I do not have a mad scramble to get everything done within the working day. In the private sector, I felt my job was a joke. I worked very hard, yet could barely get all my work covered, despite doing 45 hours a week (I was only paid for 39) It got to the stage where I got very stressed and hated going to work.

Now I feel I have got my life back again. I enjoy going to work, but I also enjoy my weekends and annual leave. I feel I am able to switch off fully during the evenings and weekends. The working day is much shorter too, 35 hours, where I get all my proper lunch breaks etc.
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Good for you. What holiday leave do you get? Do you get paid sick leave?
 
I think that public sector jobs are no longer safe though some areas are obviously more exposed than others.
The public sector in ireland is just not sustainable in its current form and the political will is there now to do something about it.
 
More than 2 days sick has to be certified, Mon & Fri always have to be certified, theres a limit to the number of uncertified days and certified days in a time period, couldn't tell you what they are. Long term sick have other limits. Only people I've heard hitting those are people with serious illness or injury. Holidays change per grade, most have 22~24. Higher managers and long timers, get a couple of more days over time. Of course you can add privilege days. Some have flexi time, but not all. The main difference is the 2 privilege days. Oh and you don't work crazy hours for no reason/benefit which was common in the private sector for me at least.

Pretty much identical to what I had in numerous companies in the private sector. Most people I know in the private sector have the same if not better.
 
In the SME sector/ small shops etc I have never heard of anyone getting more than the statutory minimum.
I get 20 days a year. We don’t give sick pay but if a long term employee is seriously ill we do pay them (often for months) as they have given years of service to the company and usually have a family to support and a mortgage to pay. Without playing the martyr I don’t really get sick so sick pay for me doesn’t come up, I can’t think of more than five or six days I’ve had to take off in the last 18 years, none in the last 6.
Obviously if anyone is out due to a work related injury they are paid in full including overtime (averaged for the last 8 weeks) but again thankfully, this is a very rare occurrence. We have had to send people home because of injuries that they sustained at home (one guy came in the day after he cut off his finger at home with a circular saw!).

The notion of people taking their uncertified sick days as if they were extra holidays is completely alien to me, and those I work with. A friend who works in the HSE said that she gets a notification from her union rep telling her how many sick days she has left. She said that she is put under low-level pressure to take them.
 
Purple said:
A friend who works in the HSE said that she gets a notification from her union rep telling her how many sick days she has left. She said that she is put under low-level pressure to take them.
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Yes, I've heard of this too.
 
Purple said:
The notion of people taking their uncertified sick days as if they were extra holidays is completely alien to me, and those I work with. A friend who works in the HSE said that she gets a notification from her union rep telling her how many sick days she has left. She said that she is put under low-level pressure to take them.
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:eek:
That's appalling, and I'm shocked.

Because this has been coming up a lot lately, both in the media and on AAM, I've asked a few colleagues how uncertified sick leave is treated by my current Department: some have slightly different procedures than others and I've only been here a couple of years - not long enough to have taken any myself since on average I take about one uncertified sick day every three to four years! I'm informed that it's looked at very closely, particularly if it falls on a Friday or Monday. Line managers are expected to pay attention to the amount of uncertified sick leave taken by staff, and to act if there's the remotest suspicion of abuse. One person was contacted by personnel having taken two Mondays as uncert sick - both when genuinely ill, apparently, but the point is that it's rigorously monitored and absolutely not viewed as some sort of bonus leave entitlement.

I do know of some people who treat is as such, and was actually dunbstruck some years ago when a then-colleague said she had only three days leave and two sick days "left to take".
 
Interesting post Dreamerb, what sanction can be taken by HRor a manager against an employee who takes loads of uncertified sick days?
 
You're not comparing like with like, if you are comparing SME sector/ small shops with public sector. The public sector is very similar to big companies and the corporate environment in general.

Not much point in comparing working considerations in say Intel or Microsoft, with working in your local corner shop, or your family business. I worked for many years in a family business and other odd jobs. It never occurred to me to use that in my comparision. If you choose that instead of working somewhere with better conditions, thats a personal decision. I choose not to work in those kinda jobs. Indeed I have left jobs where I was expected to work excessive hours for no worthwhile gain in either pay or in achieving work goals.

I have had the opposite experience of sick leave. Its not encouraged. I think it goes against you when it comes to promotions too. But I'm sure its down to the culture in particular office, and specific managers. In the same working excessive hours is usually down to specific people/managers rather than a realistic/useful schedule.

Not everyone is a resistent to sickness as everyone else. Some people genuinely do catch everything going, especially if they have kids or are older. So the implication that because one person doesn't take sick days, no one else should, doesn't really stand up. You can have good years and bad years. Thats life.
 
aircobra19 said:
You're not comparing like with like, if you are comparing SME sector/ small shops with public sector. The public sector is very similar to big companies and the corporate environment in general.

Not much point in comparing working considerations in say Intel or Microsoft, with working in your local corner shop, or your family business.
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Why should the public sector not be benchmarked against the SME sector?
Intel and IBM have massive worldwide revenues and their business spans the globe, the pay and conditions that they offer their employees lean on that worlkwide base, not the local base in Ireland. The SME sector is a truer indicator of what is sustainable in this economy.
 
Purple said:
Interesting post Dreamerb, what sanction can be taken by HRor a manager against an employee who takes loads of uncertified sick days?
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Plenty, though as you can presumably tell from my post it's not an issue I've had to deal with - my staff are very reliable, and as it happens I've never had someone reporting to me who's taken "sick" leave in that way. Problematic for other reasons (not anyone I'm currently working with, happily), yes on occasion, but not that one.

Anyway, I gather that a quiet word from the direct manager is usually sufficient to deal with a problem, but if it's not there are quite a few sanctions available. These could include, depending on persistence of the problem, one or a combination of withholding - or, in extreme cases, taking back - of increments, withdrawal of flexible working hours where available, warnings recorded on the formal personnel file, and recording (when someone's applying for promotional positions) that they are "unsatisfactory" in attendance / sick-leave. That last would weigh heavily against someone for promotion and obviously would not be used for genuine and certified illness unless there was a compelling reason to believe they could not take the job for medical reasons.
 
No job is currently safe and this will surely apply to the public sector as their employer will struggle to pay them if the costs remain as they are:

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Purple said:
Why should the public sector not be benchmarked against the SME sector?
Intel and IBM have massive worldwide revenues and their business spans the globe, the pay and conditions that they offer their employees lean on that worlkwide base, not the local base in Ireland. The SME sector is a truer indicator of what is sustainable in this economy.
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Those companies don't level pay and conditions globally. They do it locally. In my experience, US, Ireland, India, Japan don't all have the same pay and conditions with the same company. If they did how would take advantage of cheap local labour? From what I've read in the report, and I've just scanned it, not read it in any detail. Benchmarking included the SME sector in pay and conditions including types of leave, sick leave etc. IN my experience the conditions are very similar to what I had in the private sector. Pay is a little less, but hours are less. Bit more security, maybe. If you consider the title of this thread, I don't think jobs in the public sector are as secure as they were. But thats my own area. Its obviously very different in other areas.
 
I think that the safety of your public sector job relates to the sector that you are in. If you are a ‘pure’ civil servant then I think that your job is slightly more at risk than it was last year, but relative to the private sector its still pretty safe. In the greater ‘public sector’ at large security depends on the nature of your work. I work in a public sector area where there are cutbacks and recruitment freezes but we cannot cease operations as that is not an option. I feel that my job is about as safe as any other in the public sector.

In my experience it is nigh on impossible to get sacked from the public sector. I know of one worker in my workplace who has assaulted fellow staff on more than one occasion but when disciplinary proceedings were attempted his union stepped in and threatened strike action, labour court, etc. Another senior worker I know racially abused a co worker in front of lots of senior people in a meeting and again his union step in to protect him.

The unions are key to some of the problems in the public sector. They have been allowed to garner too much power. A good example is the HSE. I find it laughable that one of the issues the ICTU never speak of with any great conviction is the poor level of service and the high costs associated with the HSE. If they did they would have to agree that the HSE is overstaffed and needs streamlining. I find it amazing that nurses can ask for a reduction in their working hours and claim that this will not affect patient care. To me that means that currently they are working inefficiently. How about working more efficiently but keeping your 39hr week? If necessary pay them more. What would this to for the performance of the HSE?

There is a bias from the public and some politicians towards treating ‘frontline’ staff as untouchables and blaming the pencil pushers for all of the HSE’s and other departments ills. I think everyone in the public sector needs to look at their own performance and ask are they earning their salary. I have no objection to paying consultants over €200k if they provide a level of service to match the salary.

As a public sector worker I 'earn' over €100k per annum for a 32 hour week. In reality I work a lot more than that but I still know I have a good deal. Some of my co-workers on similar contracts work as little as possible and still get paid. To be honest it gets me down that I work my ass off and some co workers do feck all and we both get paid the same and both have equal chances of promotion. I think that the poor attitude of some public sector workers does tar us all with a bad name and it’s also like a virus which spreads through their co workers making the situation worse. I think that a ‘root and branch’ review of the entire public service is long overdue. I am confident I give value for money, but if I don’t I have no objections to changing my work practices.
 
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