Madam, – In this dire economic environment, one obvious and justified way for the Government to raise money would be for it to enforce the contract it has with its employees.
If they, for example, refuse to take telephone calls, this reduces their productivity by, say, 10 per cent. A similar deduction from their pay should be made. In the private sector, if an employee refuses to carry out instructions given in the normal course of his work, he can be dismissed. A huge amount of taxpayers’ money would be saved if a similar approach were to be adopted in the public sector.
Instead of lifetime security in a an undemanding job, a large number of State employees would find themselves joining an increasing number of their private sector brethren on the street. Taxes could be reduced, the national debt diminished and the largely parasitic public employees would be available for real productive work elsewhere. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – I am in total agreement with Dave Faye (March 9th) and fully support the “people on skeletal pay” in the lower ranks of the public service, even though as a member of the public I may be inconvenienced by their justified industrial action.
The main reason why I and many others like me support their action is because of the underhand manner in which the highest paid public servants were spared the punishing cuts which have been imposed on the lowest paid. The explanation offered for the reduction in the pay cut of the most senior and best paid civil servants only added insult to injury. Everybody knows that a bonus is a discretionary extra to standard pay. Removing it should not have been regarded as a reduction in pay. Yet, apparently the bonus was always paid to all and was regarded as an integral part of pay.
Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan said that removing the generous bonus meant a reduction in pay and had to be “compensated for” by a much smaller percentage pay cut than that applied to the lowest-paid (to whom such a scheme has never applied). It is this kind of perverted logic which angers many people who are not directly affected but can see the unfairness and the injustice being done to the aptly described “ill-used drudges labouring in the foothills of the civil service”. – Yours, etc,