Sir, - In the past few days both the Tanaiste and the Minister for Finance have warned of the dangers of "unreasonable pay demands" in the run-up to the negotiations for a new partnership agreement. In his weekend radio interview the Minister specifically mentioned demands for rises in the region of 20 per cent. Meeting such demands would bring about the premature death of the Celtic Tiger, he argued. Leaders of employers' organisations have been quick to row in behind this view.
Few would disagree that the concession of such large increases would indeed have serious consequences for the economy, but the thought in workers' minds is this: in any genuine partnership approach, should not the same standards of wage restraint be applied to everyone? Yet, recently the chief executive of Ryanair granted himself a 25 per cent increase on a salary already many times greater than the average industrial wage and TDs seem on the verge of giving themselves an increase of the same order. I have not heard the Tanaiste, nor the Minister, nor the leaders of employers' organisations call for restraint in either of these cases.
In fact, the claims being made by most workers fall far short of 20 per cent. What workers are demanding - and not unreasonably - is a more adequate reflection in their pay packets of the general economic buoyancy. The increases granted in recent agreements have barely kept up with the general level of inflation; and when house price rises are put into the equation, workers' real wage levels have fallen badly behind. Even the average well-paid worker in our Celtic Tiger economy can no longer realistically hope to do what his or her parents were able to do in the bad old days: own a home.
That would be bad enough in itself, but what really angers the ordinary wage earner is the prospect of living a substantial portion of his or her life in property bought as an investment by those whose levels of remuneration do not seem to be subject to any of the controls in the various partnership agreements.
Every citizen in our society wants the good times to keep on rolling, but it is important for the Tanaiste and the Minister to realise that everyone also wants to benefit from those good times and not just watch from the sidelines as they roll by. - Yours, etc.,
Harry McCauley, Maynooth Park, Maynooth, Co Kildare.