Public Sector Workers Cannot be Saddled with the Failures of the Private Sector

international | miscellaneous | press release

Wednesday September 17, 2008 17:32

by Malachy Steenson - The Workers Party

Michael Finnegan, President of the Workers Party, has stated that the new national pay agreement has saddled public sector workers with the burden of paying for the avarice and failures of the private sector.

The Workers’ Party
Head Office, 24 Mountjoy Sq. D 1

NEWS RELEASE 17th September 2008

Public Sector Workers Cannot be Saddled with the Failures of the Private Sector

Michael Finnegan, President of the Workers Party, has stated that the new national pay agreement has saddled public sector workers with the burden of paying for the avarice and failures of the private sector. “Over the past ten years” said Mr Finnegan “the bankers, the builders, the speculators and the senior managers in every PLC have made obscene profits and salaries. These people are secure for the rest of their lives and many have secured their assets in tax havens all over the world.

“Now, with the first bite of recession, the hammer is being put on the public sector workers. There has been a concerted effort over the past few months to denigrate the work of the public sector and to give the impression that all public servants are overpaid and underworked. This is a not only a gross insult to thousands of people who have dedicated their lives to the betterment of this state but is also a very deliberate attempt to divide workers along public / private sector lines. Today’s pay deal is a further attempt by employers to advance that agenda.

“The Workers Party believes that the basic requirement of any pay deal is to protect the existing living standards of workers – in other words wages must be inflation proofed. We cannot see how this deal will achieve that goal.

“A specific target of the trade unions must be to help the low paid, the working poor. These families are the most affected by food and fuel inflation which is running at a multiple of the overall inflation rate. It is difficult to see how a mere 0.5% in 21 months will protect and advance this sector of the workforce. We reject completely the claims by ISME that this deal for low-paid workers will cause unemployment. For fifty years wages were at poverty level in this country and yet the ISMEs of this world and their predecessors whinged and cried every time workers got an overdue increase.

“The threats by the CIF, led by the professional whinger Parlon, cannot be taken seriously. The problems in the construction industry do not stem from workers’ wage levels. They come directly from the gross profiteering, some would say racketeering, by the land speculators who pushed the site price for a family home to over €250,000. If Mr Parlon wants somebody to have an income freeze perhaps he should look closer to home.

“At this time” concluded Mr Finnegan “when capitalism globally is in crisis it is important that workers maintain unity. Workers, through their unions, must fight to maintain and strengthen their pay and conditions. All attempts to divide workers must be resisted. Only through unity and a strong trade union movement can workers achieve the wages and conditions to which they are entitled.

Ends

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Comments (2 of 2)

Working Class should not be made to pay the price of economic failure

by Ghandi of North Strand

Thu Sep 18, 2008 09:46

Those who have made most over the past years should be the ones to carry the burden. Remember most business's are not losing money, builders and speculators are just not making as much as they did. This is another attempt to blame Working people for the damage the establishment has done to society, just as Cowen now blames NO voters to Lisbon for causing economic turmoil.

This is the same Cowen (one of the highest paid Prime Ministers in the World) who claimed a number of weeks ago that the Irish Government counld'nt really do anything about it as it was a global problem.

mugs

by valhalla

Thu Sep 18, 2008 17:05

He is confused.

It should have said "private sector workers cannot be saddled with the failures of the public sector".

During the last 10 years of national wage afreements public sector workers have made huge gains in pay and conditions on promises of reform. Reform was never delivered. The only thing that was delivered was job and standard of living-killing stealth-taxes to pay for the huge increases in the wages and pensions enjoyed in the public service. Like-job for like-job (even excluding pensions and the value of job-security) the public sector now pays itself almost 50% more out of the taxes paid by private sector workers.

In a recent court action involving the division of assets the court heard evidence that the capitalized value of a secondary teacher on retirement (at 55!) was €2,000,000. In other words, a private employee would have had to accumulate a pension fund of €2m to buy a pension annuity equivalent to the pension enjoyed by this young retiree. The mind boggles.

Now that the bankers have joined the public sector in screwing us and we face into a recession, the public sector will exclusively shoulder the job-losses. Meanwhile the stealth-taxes will mangle the remaining income of us mugs .

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Public Sector Workers Cannot be Saddled with the Failures of the Private Sector

Comments (2 of 2)