The country's 357,000 public employees are caught in the crossfire between a Government seeking €2 billion in cuts and a hostile private sector, writes Shane Hegarty
THEY ARE NOT exactly popular right now, and they know it. They’re fully aware that there were few tears shed for their predicament this week, a week when unemployment reached 327,000. There are 357,000 public servants in the State.
They know they are, as several put it, a “soft touch”. This was driven home at 4pm on Tuesday when, along with much of the country, they gathered around radios and televisions and listened to Taoiseach Brian Cowen tell the nation where he had found €2 billion in savings. It had been billed as Cowen’s State of the Nation address, but it was also a State of the Public Sector address. For many of those outside it, it was a “Sort out the State of the Public Sector address”.
For those inside, it was an address on the future state of their wallets.
When Cowen announced that he would find €1.4 billion through a public sector pension levy, there was no surprise, because it was the same plan rejected only a few hours before at the social partnership talks; the same plan that Ictu general secretary David Begg had said was a non-starter because “frankly we were conscious of the fact that we would have had a revolution against it”.
As the public servants went back to work, the mood, in the understated words of one, was “glum”. “As you can imagine it’s the sole topic of conversation in here. On the other hand there’s some relief that it’s out in the open we can begin to plan.” And, he adds, there is hope “that the finger will start to point elsewhere for the moment”.
Actually, they can only plan a certain amount because firm details have been slow to filter out. On Wednesday, there was confusion over the exact implications, but continuing resentment at how public servants feel they’ve become scapegoats for the economy’s ills.
As the week went on, the news that the levy may, in real terms, be less severe than first feared brought a little more clarity, although for those on the lower rungs of the salary scale it didn’t ease the burden nearly as much. But at all stages, and among a cross-section of the public sector, it was clear that no matter how distasteful or worrying they found the cuts, many are not yet in the mood for “a revolution”.
“I’m not going to revolt over what I understand it to mean for me,” says one Department of Agriculture civil servant. “It’s going to be a lifestyle hit to some degree. I think my feelings have been seriously tempered since, because the unemployment figures have been seriously shocking and catastrophic, and I have a job and a salary.”
Ten years in this career, and married to another public servant, he joined the public service because it offered a chance to shape policy rather than be subjected to it, which was a job he couldn’t get in the private sector, but the conditions of employment appealed to him as a father. However, his late arrival means that he will not earn the full pension.
After the Taoiseach’s announcement, he originally feared that he and his wife would lose as much as €10,000 from their combined pay packet, even though that money would be redirected to their pensions. After reports that there would be tax relief on that, he now estimates that they’ll take in perhaps €120 less between them every week. There is some suspicion over the way details have emerged. “It’s quite a substantial reduction. I don’t know if it’s part of the softening-up process. Yesterday it was going to be a 100 per cent tax, today it’s a 60 per cent tax and suddenly it doesn’t feel so bad.”
He admits, though, that how philosophical anyone can be about the cut depends on how much they are earning. There is a general anger among middle and lower-ranking public servants at the disproportionate nature of the pension levy, as those on €200,000 will be able to absorb their cut in a way that someone on €30,000 will not. And for those earning the lower wage, there is genuine shock.
“It will be an extra €36 from my salary each week,” explains one clerical officer. She currently earns a gross salary of €31,227 a year. Even before the cut, once she puts €1,100 a month towards the mortgage and maintenance fees on her apartment (bought through the Affordable Housing scheme only two years ago), keeps her 10-year-old car running, and pays for her food, heating and other costs, she has €51 of disposable income a week. “It’s uncomfortable for me even talking about all of this, but I have to.”
THE STATISTICS about an average public servant’s annual salary being €50,000 are skewed by the top earners, she says. She is seven years in her job and it will take her another seven to reach a pay grade of €38,000. She simmers with anger over what she says is a portrayal of every public servant. “It annoys me that we are all portrayed as being overpaid. It is frustrating that through the media it’s presented as being the population that pays for us with their taxes, but we pay our taxes, too. Or that we don’t contribute to our pensions. I came in after 1995, so I already pay six-and-a-half per cent now.”
She wonders whether it is part of a wider agenda to erode workers’ rights. It has consequences, she says. “These are real people who pay taxes and do everything. I don’t know what I’ll do now. That’s the human truth of it.”
There is, though, a sense among many in the public sector that industrial action would not be a popular or wise move at the moment. There is anger, but in the current climate, they will tell you that downing tools is not yet on the cards. That attitude may change, they say, but then it may change across the entire country if the economy continues to deteriorate at this rate.
As it is, civil servants do not want to be identified. “I know people in a far worse situation than I am in,” explains one. “But as well as that, we choose to do service in the civil service and instinctively we don’t criticise the Government. You try and articulate it in a fair and balanced way but you don’t want to be seen as criticising or undermining it, because that’s the choice we make. And one of things you do, apart from the Official Secrets Act, is to sign a document that says you will act impartially and service the government, and that’s what we do.”
The public service, of course, is not a monolith, and is spread across a variety of disciplines and careers, but the current focus on it has put National Concert Hall staff alongside soldiers; clerical officers alongside dentists. And within that again, pension circumstances are different, depending on whether they joined before or after 1995, or how many years they spent in the private sector.
Yet, for all that variety, when you talk to public sector employees from whatever area, the tone, even the words, are similar. Most of them will argue that they didn’t cause this problem, that the banks should be punished, that they’ll take the pain now as long as the next time around it is someone’s else’s turn. They’ll point out that most pay a pension contribution. Some will blame the media for stoking a divide between public and private sector workers. “I don’t remember it being like this even in the 1980s,” ponders one HSE employee.
For many in the private sector, though, it is the very fact that public sector workers have been immune to the kind of pain afflicting the rest of the workforce that feeds that lack of sympathy for their concerns. They will point to the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development which said the public sector had shrunk in relation to the size of the economy, but in the wider world it is still commonly referred to as the “bloated public sector”. In fact, to mention civil servants’ gripes to anyone who has been recently unemployed is to invite a tirade. They may have lost some money, goes the argument, but they will not lose their jobs.
The public sector workers who spoke with The Irish Times were fully aware of this. One newly- qualified occupational therapist on a starting salary of €39,000, admits that “we’re in a recession, but I feel like I’m in my own boom because I’m making an income for the first time in my life. But I’ve no mortgage, I’m single, so it doesn’t affect me in the way it will others
. . . I think I will end up with about €40 or €50 less per week, which is a sizeable amount of money but really it amounts to me having less pocket money”.
His attitude has also been shaped by what he has seen happen to friends and siblings who have been laid off, have left the country or are considering it. “While I think these pay cuts are excessive and poorly proportioned, in the grand scheme of things I consider myself one of the more fortunate among my peers.”
THOSE WHO have been in the public sector for longer react to the point about their guaranteed jobs with a mix of weariness and frustration, but a common riposte is to point out how less glamorous it was during the boom years. As a civil servant at the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform says: “We don’t have the 13th month they have in the banks.”
A mother, she works part-time and she is among those who chose to go into the civil service as a lifestyle choice. “I could have made more money in the private sector. But it’s always been about balances. You can work as hard as you like here, but you’re not guaranteed promotion. In the private service you can jump two or three steps in one go. In the public sector it just churns away.”
Another civil servant says that he took a substantial pay cut when moving from the private sector, where 60-hour weeks brought a €73,000 a year reward. When he moved to the public sector, his salary dropped to €42,000 a year at first, although the hours dropped too, to about 48 a week. “There are swings and roundabouts. In the public sector, there are things like security, incremental pay, reasonably good pension. But I was forsaking things like overtime, bonuses, company cars.”
Perhaps, but won’t people be quick to tell him that he will not have to forsake a job. “I’ve been unemployed twice in my time. I know exactly what it’s like queuing for unemployment benefits. My father was a builder and he declared bankruptcy in the last recession, so I know exactly what it is for families’ incomes to contract. So we have to have awareness. People aren’t ignoring that.”
Vital statistics
- There are 357,175 people working in the public sector
- 112,000 work in the health service, 34 per cent of whom are nurses
- Among administrative staff in the health service, salaries begin at €24,407 (clerical officer) and go to €194,264 (director of national hospital)
- Education, with 92,480 employees is the second biggest public-sector area
- One-tenth of the public sector is employed in the civil service
- The salary of a newly-enlisted army private is €13,403
OUT OF POCKET: HOW THE CUTS WILL HIT HOME
Ronan Ward is a lecturer at St Patrick's College in Drumcondra, and his wife Patricia is a teacher at a special needs school in Dundalk. Two of their daughters are in teacher-training.
At first, they worried that they would lose €10,000 between them each year. While the tax relief has lessened that, Ward says: "I'm angry that the system doesn't seem to be equitable. If you're on €200,000 and you're losing about €20,000, that's not going to have nearly the same impact as if you're a teacher on €35,000. You might be paying less but it will have a greater impact. It really should have been weighted in some better way."
He is also annoyed that the levy, as he sees it, "is not helping the economy, it's just paying off debt, so it's dead money. It's not a stimulus package."
During the boom years, he says, they were getting letters every day offering cheap money. "But I was lucky, maybe because I had a bit of maturity not to jump at it, or I would have to sell the house now."
He had listened to clips from Brian Cowen's announcement on radio bulletins during his drive home from work.
When he watched the Taoiseach giving his press conference later, "it was a different Brian Cowen to the one who spoke in the Dáil. I felt more impressed by him, like this was his State of the Nation address. He needs to be more like that, because there is a huge fear outside with what's happening in this country at the moment."
Patricia had worked for 17 years in the private sector, so will have only 22 years' service when she retires, but will be subject to what he calls "the full whack" of the levy.
He wonders whether there is "an agenda" to split private and public workers, but says colleagues "are reluctant to even mention the word strike. It would be unacceptable to the public. No one would even want to go and do it." They will, he believes, "take the pain, but only if the neighbour at three times the salary takes some, too".