Government to reverse some Public Secor Pay cuts

kippy

barneystinson wrote: »

Has the t in sector been missing from the thread title since the start?!

Yes.

barneystinson

kippy wrote: »

Yes.

Only noticed it now. Very annoying, and can't unsee it now

Sheldons Brain

barneystinson wrote: »

Only noticed it now. Very annoying, and can't unsee it now

A cut of one sixth was required, about the same as the PS, and this cut preserved the appearance of the word.

Godge

antoobrien wrote: »

Has anybody got a summary timeline of when the various cuts and levies were applied to the PS pay structures?

Can't find any offhand, but I don't think that PS pay was cut in either the budget delivered in 2008 (for 2009) or the supplemental budget in 2009.

Can anyone clarify this for me?

http://www.oireachtas.ie/documents/bills28/acts/2009/a0509.pdf

This was the first cut, introduced in early 2009 that brought the pension levy and the cuts to the farm management waste levy.

This was all signalled in the budgets for 2009, why are you trying to rewrite history?

sarumite wrote: »

Whether a contract has been improved or deteriorated depends on the perspective of the different parties involved in the contract. The fact is a contract can be changed through an act of legislation and depending on your perspective this could improve or deteriorate the value of the contract (this is not limited to employment law either). Your obstinate refusal to acknowledge this fact is becoming ridiculous.

Rubbish.

The state has the power, the employee has little.

sarumite wrote: »

The reason deterioration of working conditions hasn't been implemented before has nothing to do with legal or constitutional issues, its purely political concern. No politician in their right mind would pass a law that reduced the working conditions of workers in favour of an employer outside of an absolute economic emergency.

Yes, it does, the constitution protects the weak. The weak in this case is the employee, the power is the state. To allow the state to do what it did requires exceptional circumstances. They applied, they no longer apply. Get real.

jank

ardmacha wrote: »

Horsecack, for the most part the public didn't wish to do without the services so had no intention of letting go of staff, so that their litte Johnny couldt go to school or their Granny could go to hospital. Public servants do not enjoy stability of employment because of some "priviledge", they do so because there is continuing demand for their services.

So everyone in the PS is flat out and productive 100%? Tell me how many administrative staff were let go when the HSE was formed? ZERO
Pointing at a nurse and saying that she/he is the true reflection of the PS is the older trick in the book.

ardmacha wrote: »

This is one of the great fallacies which underlies a lot of the nonsense here and in the media, that a brain surgeon or forensic auditor cannot get paid more because some untrained citizen somewhere is paid less. Employees should be paid the going rate, issues of equity should be matters for tax and welfare policy. If the country is to be run on the basis you and other irresponsible commentators suggest, then I any rational person should emigrate.

Employees should be paid the going market rate, no problem from me on that one. However, you are still defending that argument that the PS deserve their pay increase more than all employees deserve a tax cut. Then you talk about morals and equality. You couldn't make this us tbh.

Gumbo

jank wrote: »

So everyone in the PS is flat out and productive 100%?

In both sectors you are going to get people not performing, in the private sector, 100% of employees are not flat out either.

antoobrien

Godge wrote: »

http://www.oireachtas.ie/documents/bills28/acts/2009/a0509.pdf

This was the first cut, introduced in early 2009 that brought the pension levy and the cuts to the farm management waste levy.

Thanks

Godge wrote: »

This was all signalled in the budgets for 2009, why are you trying to rewrite history?

Do asking a question to clarify the history -when it's admitted that the knowledge is lacking - is rewriting history now?

It's easy to see why this debate has gone to pot.

limnam

kceire wrote: »

In both sectors you are going to get people not performing, in the private sector, 100% of employees are not flat out either.

That maybe true.

But.

A lot of the time your overall salary is tied into performance. Don't perform, earn less money. Bonus's/Sales etc

It's a lot easier to remove a non performing private employee than it is a public sector one. A lot of public sector jobs don't even have KPI's so they have no idea if they're performing or not.

Sheldons Brain

jank wrote: »

So everyone in the PS is flat out and productive 100%? Tell me how many administrative staff were let go when the HSE was formed? ZERO
Pointing at a nurse and saying that she/he is the true reflection of the PS is the older trick in the book.

No, not everyone is performing at 100% and that is a problem that should be addressed directly. The government have singularly avoided any attention on productivity as a concept, as this would show up the incompetence of management. The attitude here and in the media seems to be that there is one person in the PS who isn't good value for money, then that justifies the treatment of whole sector. You have a lot in common with Benjamin Netanyahu who thinks that if one Hamas guy lives in an apartment block that the whole thing should be attacked.

fliball123

Sheldons Brain wrote: »

I don't think anyone disputes that an increment represents a pay increase for an individual. What this thread is about is whether there should be aggregate increase to a body of employees. Yet many people here, for reasons of obstruction, go on and on about increments. It is a bit like someone ranting about the movement of individual raindrops in a thread about how much rainfall there is.

They go on about them because its taking money away from other areas and we have to borrow it. Thats the only issue people have with it.

fliball123

kceire wrote: »

In both sectors you are going to get people not performing, in the private sector, 100% of employees are not flat out either.

KC usually if your not performing in the private sector your found out and if your not found out the company suffers. More importantly if a person in the private sector is not performing and in a big company which usually makes a profit it makes no difference as the profits made by the company is paying for this employee and has no impact on other tax payers.

Ralphdejones

jank wrote: »

Employees should be paid the going market rate, no problem from me on that one. However, you are still defending that argument that the PS deserve their pay increase more than all employees deserve a tax cut. Then you talk about morals and equality. You couldn't make this us tbh.

That would be the Eastern European rate then.
We all know what's going to happen in the PS pay rises. The lower grades will only get back a fraction of what was cut, and the legions of 'managers' will be on more money than they ever were.
But as Joe Public and the media refuses differentiate between the two, the taxpayer, continues to get screwed every time.

Dozen Wicked Words

Lots of under performing shop workers, restaurant workers etc who do the bare minimum, and continue to do so. That's why people whine and whinge about poor service, or scruffy supermarkets, or workers talking when a customer is waiting to speak with them. But when certain people talk about the private sector, they aren't talking about this kind of workforce because it's not convenient for their argument, and it's a type of work place most of these poster will have no knowledge of.


In short, the notion that only the public sector allow under performing workers to continue is wrong.

Geuze

jank wrote: »

The bust also made the guts of half a million jobless. How many full time PS workers were let go? It is clear there was an agreement

Peak employment was 2.169m in 2007 Q3

2012 q1 employment was 1.825m, seems to be the lowest.

That's 344,000 job losses.

http://www.cso.ie/en/qnhs/releasesandpublications/qnhspostcensusofpopulation2011/

Geuze

antoobrien wrote: »

Has anybody got a summary timeline of when the various cuts and levies were applied to the PS pay structures?

Can't find any offhand, but I don't think that PS pay was cut in either the budget delivered in 2008 (for 2009) or the supplemental budget in 2009.

Can anyone clarify this for me?

http://www.per.gov.ie/wp-content/uploads/FAQs-on-PRD-updated-JULY-2009.pdf

The PRD was introduced on 1st March 2009.

The original deduction rates, which remain applicable from 1 March to 30
April 2009, are as follows:
First €15,000 3%
Between €15,000 and €20,000 6%
Above €20,000 10%

In order to ameliorate the impact of the deduction on lower paid public
servants (partially offset by an increased rate on the earnings band above
€60,000), new rates and bands will apply with effect from 1 May 2009 as
follows:
First €15,000 of earnings exempt
Between €15,000 and €20,000 5%
Between €20,000 and €60,000 10%
Above €60,000 10.5%

Geuze

The second cut came in Jan 2010.

http://www.per.gov.ie/public-service-pay-policy/

The 2010 Budget has announced the following reductions in Public Sector pay:

Public Servants earning over 200,000 will have a 15% pay reduction.

Public Servants earning from 165,000 to 200,000 will have a 12% pay reduction.

Public Servants earning from 125,000 – 165,000 will see an 8% pay reduction.

Other Public Servants with salaries under €125,000 will have:

A 5% reduction on the first 30,000 of income.

A 7.5% reduction on the pay between 30,001 and 70,000

A 10% reduction on the pay between 70,001 and 125,000.

Geuze

The third cut was the HRA in 2013.

Peter Flynt

Geuze wrote: »

The third cut was the HRA in 2013.

In both the Croke Park and Haddington Road agreements there are basically fourth and fifth cuts as both agreements have demands for unpaid work for the public servant that were not there prior to these "agreements"

carpejugulum

And they got increments to make it back and are underperforming as a whole.

sarumite

Godge wrote: »

Rubbish.

The state has the power, the employee has little.

Of course the state (assume you meant government) have the power. They are the states legislative body. That is how representative democracy works. Ours is far from unique in that respect. If you don't like it vote for DDI in the next election

Yes, it does, the constitution protects the weak. The weak in this case is the employee, the power is the state. To allow the state to do what it did requires exceptional circumstances. They applied, they no longer apply. Get real.

We have already established several posts previously that the legislation must be constitutional. Anyway I am done wasting time with this. It is impossible to have a logical discussion when you continue to belligerently argue from a perspective of myopic ignorance.

relax carry on

carpejugulum wrote: »

And they got increments to make it back and are underperforming as a whole.

So everyone in the public sector gets increaments for ever and everyone in the public sector underperforms?? Holy generalizations Batman!

For those who did get increaments, the USC, increased pension deductions as well as normal paye and prsi ensured that their actual take home pay increased very little.

Head The Wall

relax carry on wrote: »

So everyone in the public sector gets increaments for ever and everyone in the public sector underperforms?? Holy generalizations Batman!

For those who did get increaments, the USC, increased pension deductions as well as normal paye and prsi ensured that their actual take home pay increased very little.

What's your point?

Private sector workers also pay USC and PAYE, if they had a pension they were also hit a pension levy and if companies are not doing well they can't afford to give automatic payrises to employees just for turning up to work

PS workers think it's normal to get automatic payrises for nothing, it's not. It makes absolutely no sense for the govt to be implementing paycuts on one hand and then giving payrises on the other. But then they're obviously not the sharpest knives in the drawer.

Gryire

Geuze wrote: »

Peak employment was 2.169m in 2007 Q3

2012 q1 employment was 1.825m, seems to be the lowest.

That's 344,000 job losses.

http://www.cso.ie/en/qnhs/releasesandpublications/qnhspostcensusofpopulation2011/

Most of these were retirements with generous pensions.

barneystinson

Gryire wrote: »

Most of these were retirements with generous pensions.

Any figures you can offer to support that?

Being generous, "most" would mean in excess of 50%, so I eagerly await your explanation of how €172k+ people have retired with generous pensions...!

Gryire

barneystinson wrote: »

Any figures you can offer to support that?

Being generous, "most" would mean in excess of 50%, so I eagerly await your explanation of how €172k+ people have retired with generous pensions...!

There were no compulsory redundancies. Hence job losses were down to people retiring at normal pension age and people taking early retirement packages. The vast majority of these people would have in excess of 30 years service. Hence pension would be in region of 40% - 50% of final salary.

barneystinson

Gryire wrote: »

There were no compulsory redundancies. Hence job losses were down to people retiring at normal pension age and people taking early retirement packages. The vast majority of these people would have in excess of 30 years service. Hence pension would be in region of 40% - 50% of final salary.

What's that got to do with the post you quoted, which said the number of people employed in the country had fallen by 344k from peak to trough?

Gryire

barneystinson wrote: »

What's that got to do with the post you quoted, which said the number of people employed in the country had fallen by 344k from peak to trough?

Not all the 344k were redundancies.

kippy

Gryire wrote: »

Not all the 344k were redundancies.

Look,
I think you've gotten your wires crossed here.

The post that mentions 344K was in relation to the number of additional people that went from employment onto the live register as an almost direct result of the property and associated collapse.
This brought the live register number up to 450K odd. It has nothing to do with numbers in the public service.

barneystinson

Gryire wrote: »

Not all the 344k were redundancies.

You said "most of them" were retirements onto generous pensions; I'm wondering how you know that?

kippy

barneystinson wrote: »

You said "most of them" were retirements onto generous pensions; I'm wondering how you know that?

The poster has obviously gotten his wires crossed.
You generally dont get a pension and end up on the live register anyway....