DESMOND GREAVES SUMMER SCHOOL:THE CROKE Park agreement on public service pay and reform is going to come under some dreadful pressure over the coming weeks, a senior official of the trade union Siptu has said.
Speaking yesterday at the Desmond Greaves weekend school Marie Sherlock of Siptu’s research department said that while some in the trade union movement had contended that the deal did not deliver enough, “in the outside world the argument will be forcefully put forward that the agreement simply went too far” .
She forecast that in the run-up to the budget the media would “have it up in bright lights” that public sector workers had been protected at the expense of the lower-paid workers who would be targeted to generate additional income revenue and social welfare recipients who would be hit by harsh cuts once again.
She said this did not take account of the fact that public sector workers had already experienced an actual gross pay cut of close to 12 per cent.
“A line of argument will be peddled that public sector workers have been shielded from the worst of the crisis; yet, when we compare reductions in both the public and private sector, we clearly see that the claims of mass cuts of 15 per cent or 20 per cent in the basic pay of private sector workers have been grossly exaggerated.
“I don’t at all doubt that cuts of this magnitude have been imposed, but it is false to suggest that this has been widespread across the economy.”
She said official data released last week showed that for the private sector overall there had been a reduction of 4.7 per cent in weekly earnings over the past five quarters.
Ms Sherlock said that the greatest job would be to communicate and demonstrate that in exchange for the commitments on pay in the Croke Park deal that real reform was happening.
“There have been some great improvements in service delivery in some areas of the public sector over the past number of years, such as in the Passport Office, in the Revenue Commissioners, in the Department of Social Protection, yet I believe that these have not been well communicated to the general public.
“Similarly, I think there is an onus on those unions involved to communicate that in order for change to happen, it is not just a question of the workers coming in on a Monday morning and transforming their mode of operation: changes to information technology, staff training and other structural changes all have to happen in order to make these reforms work,” she said.
The general secretary of the Civil and Public Services Union Blair Horan criticised a lack of accountability among the elites in Irish society and among some professional groups. He said the real failure in public services had not been the ordinary hard-working staff but largely in the area of professionals and policy advice.
“Certainly if you look at some of the things we have seen in recent times, the idea the professions can regulate themselves in some part of the public service displays a lack of accountability – a white collar lack of accountability.”
Mr Horan said that ultimately politicians would be held accountable by the electorate but that there was also a need for accountability for senior public servants.