And the massive structural change in the associated pension benefits? Part of that was via the pension levy also, which is still in place, making the nominal pay rises look more favourable.
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During the crisis PS pay was reduced by 15%, I think.
I agree with you. Though that's not what I asked you.I think it is quite sensible for employees to fight for the best pay and conditions they can get from their employers.
Yes, many go to the Middle East and pay no income taxes by working in slave economies and benefitting from and participating in oppressive and despicable regimes. Those nurses etc are reprehensible and loathsome people. They should be utterly ashamed of themselves.If the public sector did not keep up on pay and conditions, you would presumably see the supply of workers to the public sector dry up. Indeed, in certain sectors that is clearly a problem (see domestically trained nurses emigrating while we rely on immigrant nurses to staff many of our hospitals.)
I agree, but in a conversation about keeping pace with inflation pay increases which are already agreed have to be part of the equation.As I say above, I view increments as one of the conditions of public sector employment that provides compensating differential.
I also agree. Senior Civil Servants are very under paid.The point also doesn't address public sector workers at the top of their scales.
Of course they should.I think workers should feel entitled to fight for the best deal they can get under the circumstances.
That's the crux of it; the State had shown their willingness to bend over the think of the next election.We have a tight labour market, an upward trend in wages generally, and a government that is both in surplus and shown that it will bend the knee.
I've have no problem with pay increases in return for changes in work practices and a big increase in flexibility. Where I work everyone does whatever needs to be done. If it is more efficient for an engineer to clean a floor they will clean it themselves rather than wait for a cleaner. We do whatever is the best use of labour. There is no demarcation.I might not like them blowing the surplus the way they do - e.g., I think overall there are too many public sector workers in some segments and I disagree with the rate of current government spending expansion. But I can separate that in my head from the right of the people who have been hired to do the work to advocate for themselves and get a good deal, which would be matching inflation if possible and as seems to be happening across the wider economy.
Yea, but their employer was bankrupt.During the crisis PS pay was reduced by 15%, I think.
I think across your post there's a mix of moralising and views on the general worth and effectiveness of public sector workers, alongside some fair points about the ways you can consider public sector pay (for which we have a fair disagreement).
We all take a moral position on things, at least I hope we do. I consider supporting and participating in the running of genocidal and murderous States to be a morally repugnant thing to do.I think across your post there's a mix of moralising and views on the general worth and effectiveness of public sector workers, alongside some fair points about the ways you can consider public sector pay (for which we have a fair disagreement).
We have a net inflow of Nurses. From an economic perspective the pay levels are at least adequate to maintain a supply of a sufficient number of suitably qualified people to do the job (and no, Irish nurses are not the best in the world).Where nurses go and why (many go to Australia, not just UAE, for example) is irrelevant to my view of it, which is more of an economist eye view of the push and pull factors here. Clearly pay and conditions in the round is not satisfactory here.
Misallocation of resources is a far bigger problem that pay levels. I think we agree on that.Meanwhile we complain our health service costs are out of control. These two things can be true at once.
I've been in plenty of hospitals over the years. Most of the people there did their job sufficiently well and within expectation. I'm not sure what constitutes "above and beyond". None of them were diving on grenades.Whether people work hard enough in the public sector to your liking is going off on a major tangent. I could counter with stories of being a patient in a public hospital not too long ago and seeing nothing but staff including nurses going above and beyond.
Yes, we certainly agree there.Underneath it all, where perhaps we do have more common ground: I think government has let the overall cost of running the state balloon and they are playing a risky game. But the outworking of that in my view should be fewer state agencies and less people doing things I'd consider non-productive, not now keeping the wages of the people hired to do that work down in real terms.
I think there was a performative element to the whole thing. The Unions had to be seen to hold the Government's feet to the fire after the hauliers held the country to ransom and the Government had to be seen to hold out against their demands.I also think that generally public sector workers have played ball on industrial peace over many years, and I go back to my earlier point (and the original point of this thread) in saying that I can't fathom why government let the previous pay deal lapse without a new agreement in place. Indeed, if they thought ahead on these things and had come to an agreement before the end of March ("in good time before the current deal runs out") they would have skipped the unions seeing the leverage they could get post April fuel protests...!
+1I think there was a performative element to the whole thing. The Unions had to be seen to hold the Government's feet to the fire after the hauliers held the country to ransom and the Government had to be seen to hold out against their demands.