My outrage at some members of the public service

Scofflaw wrote: »

That's what you get for choosing science, I'm afraid. It's why science has all those "science outreach" and "get kids interested in scientific careers" efforts while financial services doesn't.

cordially,
Scofflaw

i'm not a scientist
i'm a midwife

P. Breathnach wrote: »

And you did not find one that claimed that it was a cut to net pay.

Might I remind you of the point I challenged?

I have bolded the bit that provoked my challenge. It now looks to me as if you cannot back up your claim.

Haha funny man. They stated paycuts, when in fact those paycuts were really half of what they were using tax relief.

Sneakee wrote: »

The leaving Cert is designed as a standard to compare people, if you angry at it be angry at the system not me! What else have I got to compare people with. Should I compare wages, does high wages mean they are better than me??? Is that how I should be comparing people on one another??? Does a prison guard who is out of Secondary school who may not be as intelligent as me or anyone deserve to be on more money than me?

Look at every public job in Ireland, prison guards,Teachers, police, nurses, fire fighters, etc compare them to their counterparts in the United States and you see the divide! The American techers, police, nurses, etc are on far less a wage even in expensive cities such as New York than any of their Irish counter parts...You tell me why???? Cost of living is not the reason! Why is Ireland the only country to be over generous to their public servants?

The person who did get those marks was not the most intelligent person but was hard manual labourer...Lovely guy and he freely admits to not being the smartest guy.

In fairness now, I'm surprised you still went for that area despite the high level of maths needed. You worked at it so I commend you.

The leaving cert is a measure of academic worth, and a poor one at that. Civil engineering can be a hands on job as well as academic, the person you mentioned might be able to take one look at a building and give a far better estimation of it that somebody will all the LC points in the world.

I wouldnt compare your friend unless I worked alongside him and knew for a fact he was crap, the fact he got 150 points in some test a decade ago is meaningless.

I think the the frontline PS workers make very poor targets, If you pulled a 100 people off the street you`d be hard pressed to find some who would seriosuly want to be a prison guard or fireman, they can be threatening jobs.

The biggest problem with the public sector is the management, they sat back and let it grow and grow out of proportion, the government had to know stamp duty would never last and it would all come to a griding halt, but instead they went for the short term and tried to please the punters.

I dont disagree that it has to be cut though, its obvious, the people out protesting are in la-la land. If the government was a private company it would be absolutly slash and burn at this point, unfortunatly no government can restort to that as the services are so vital. But at this stage it looks like there is no other choice.

To be honest if I was in Cowens shoes Id be leaving the vitals til last and start hitting up stuff like RTE, I think the country would survive well enough without alot of its junk.

Sneakee wrote: »

In fairness now, I'm surprised you still went for that area despite the high level of maths needed. You worked at it so I commend you.

Thats my point, people arent black and white, they arent a known quantity. Id recommend looking closer at people if your getting into management, otherwise you`ll step on alot of toes.

For those who have not already seen this article, finally some one in the media making sense.
Public sector pay cuts unfair and counter-productive on the tax front
By Fergus Finlay
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
I THINK if I were a public servant today, I*d be mad as hell.
With a few well documented political exceptions, I*ve never known anyone who went into the public service to make money.
In fact if you wanted to make money, the last place you*d go for a career is into the public service.
Some people choose a public service career for security and many choose it because it offers the chance to do something or to be something they*ve always wanted to be. A nurse, a doctor, a teacher, a fireman. To work
at healing the sick, catching the baddies, teaching the kids - I*ve known people who grew up from childhood wanting to do just that, and who have found tremendous fulfilment from following a chosen career as a public
servant.
And I*ve known public servants who maybe ended up in places they never expected to find themselves, and nevertheless did the state more than a little service. It is public servants who run our libraries (and if you haven*t visited a library lately, go and take a look - it will knock
your socks off).
It is public servants who help Irish manufacturers to market their goods and to export them. It is public servants who, behind the scenes, probably did as much and more to bring peace to this island than any of the
higher profile politicians who routinely claim their place in history.
I could go on. But you*re going to have to take my word for this, if you haven*t had direct experience of the public service. As I said, I*ve never met a public servant who was in it for the money. And I*ve never met a public servant who wanted to let his or her country down.
Sure, they*re not all equally able. They*re not even all equally pleasant.
We*ve all, I*m guessing, had both good and bad experiences at the hands of public servants. But I*m guessing we*ve all had mixed experiences at the
hands of business people, bankers, priests, shopkeepers, mechanics, car salesmen, dentists, doctors, and the thousands and thousands of other people who make their living in the private sector in Ireland.
So why, I wonder, are public servants being told, day after day, that they have to bear the brunt of the public expenditure cuts? In addition to that, why are public servants being constantly attacked and derided as if
they had suddenly become the fat cats in our society?
Why is there such division, and it seems such jealousy, between the public and the private sector? When public servants, quite rightly, point out that their pay has been hit by the pension levy, the commentators immediately
snap that it*s only a modest contribution to the real cost of their pensions.
But for years and years public service pay in Ireland was calculated on the basis that the value of the pension had to be taken into account when making comparisons. In other words, public service salaries tended to be lower than those in the private sector because there was more security in the public service and the pensions were related to income rather than to the contribution made.
I*ve always argued (and I see the OECD is doing it too) that some government has to bite the bullet on the pension issue by closing down the "defined benefit" scheme (which relates pension to salary) for new entrants to the public service, and by placing all new entrants on a defined contribution scheme (which relates pension to the amount you pay into the scheme).
Such a change would bring the cost of funding public service pensions down dramatically over time. It would also mean that everyone in the economy who was working towards a pension, whether in the private or the public sector, would be on the same footing.
But you know what? The pensions entitlements of public servants haven*t actually changed at all. What has changed is that many pension schemes in the private sector have lost huge value partly because of mismanagement and also because the equities and stocks and shares they have been invested in have been damaged by greed and incompetence. More than a few pension funds, for instance, invested heavily in Irish bank shares. Need I say more?
And we*re being told every day that public service pay is at the heart of the whole public expenditure problem because it accounts for a massive proportion of public spending.
When they*re talking about public spending, commentators seem to use
whatever figure comes into their heads. I*ve heard it solemnly
reported on
the radio that public service pay accounts for proportions of spending
ranging from 50% to 75%. There*s a mantra about it - "it*s simply
impossible to cut public spending (and thereby save the economy is the
inference) without cutting pay because pay simply accounts for too
much".
The actual figure is about one-third. Public service pay is about
one-third
of public spending. So every €3 you take off a public servant should
give
you about €1 in public spending cuts.
There*s a couple of problems with this. First, every time you take €3
off a
public servant, you lose anything up to €1 in tax revenue because
(unlike a
lot of people in the private sector) public servants are all PAYE
workers -
cut their pay and you immediately lose the income tax they give you.
So
actually, if you want to get a cut of €1 in overall public spending
from
public service pay, you have to take around €4.
The Government has said it wants to take €1.3 billion from public
servants
as their contribution to resolving our financial crisis. If it means
that
as a net figure (taking account of the loss in tax revenue), it*s
going to
have to cut pay by around €1.7bn in fact. That*s 10% of the public
pay bill
from January 1 next.
BUT IF it wants to apply that kind of a cut so that lower paid public
servants have to take a hit of, say, 5%, it*s going to have to cut
middle
income public servants by around 15%.
It was not the public service, nor anyone in the public service, who
precipitated this crisis in the first place. And when we*re not busy
sneering at public servants, we totally depend on them. Take away our
public service in Ireland and you drive a huge hole into our quality
of
life.
Against that background, the kind of cuts that are now having to be
considered, to yield a net €1.3bn in public spending reductions, are
savage. They will have a huge impact on thousands of families (some
commentators don*t like us noticing that public servants have
families,
too) and they will seriously damage morale in vital services.
Despite what the commentators might like us to think, cuts of that
magnitude are fundamentally unfair. I mightn*t agree - in fact I
don*t
agree - with the proposition that our economy and our school system can
be
shut down for a day, or maybe more, by public sector protest. But
because
the whole approach is so unfair, I can fully understand the anger
behind
that protest.

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner
Tuesday,
November 17, 2009