Public sector pay increase

Quin_Dub · 27-04-2015 12:12PM

Yara Old Backyard wrote: »

I would very much disagree, it is important for communities to maintain their facilities and one thing is keeping their primary schools open.

Can't agree there..

In my area there are 3 schools within a 4 mile radius , one has about 250 pupils and a brand new building with all mod con. The other 2 are 25 and 40 pupils respectively with 5 teachers between them. Both schools have a "principcal" teacher as well on the salary to match...

Shutting those 2 smaller schools and moving the staff and pupils to the large new school makes total and utter sense.

Better facilities for the pupils , reduce running costs (insurance , maintenance etc) and better use of resources.

They have begun discussions to close the smaller school for next September thankfully, but the other one should close too in my view..

In terms of "community" and location - Both schools are literally in the middle of nowhere - No village, no shop , no pub, no post-office - Nothing.. Just a (tiny) school building on the side of a road...

There will be situations where a small school needs to stay for various reasons - totally accept that , but equally there are lots of examples like mine above where consolidation is a no-brainer.

facing_west · 27-04-2015 12:20PM

Yara Old Backyard wrote: »

I would very much disagree, it is important for communities to maintain their facilities and one thing is keeping their primary schools open.

so you think closing a school with nineteen pupils which results in those pupils having to travel to the centre of the parish less than three miles away , is going to damage a community ?

im not talking about the northern territory in australia or even connemarra where closing a school , means having to travel twenty miles

facing_west · 27-04-2015 12:22PM

as_mo_bhosca wrote: »

I totally agree with you on this. There are some remote places where small schools are justified but not in the majority of cases. Children in these schools cost multiples of the amount it costs to educate children in "full size" schools. Keep the number of teachers in the country the same, reduce class size. You could also increase the amount of money schools get to run the school. Currently no where near enough.

three primary schools in the parish i grew up in , two have less than twenty pupils , one has around 130 and was only built six years ago , had the planners any brains , they would have built a bigger new one and closed the two small ones but sure then the oppositions campaigns would begin and no one does hyperbolic over the top rural opposition campaigns like we do

facing_west · 27-04-2015 12:25PM

Quin_Dub wrote: »

Can't agree there..

In my area there are 3 schools within a 4 mile radius , one has about 250 pupils and a brand new building with all mod con. The other 2 are 25 and 40 pupils respectively with 5 teachers between them. Both schools have a "principcal" teacher as well on the salary to match...

Shutting those 2 smaller schools and moving the staff and pupils to the large new school makes total and utter sense.

Better facilities for the pupils , reduce running costs (insurance , maintenance etc) and better use of resources.

They have begun discussions to close the smaller school for next September thankfully, but the other one should close too in my view..

In terms of "community" and location - Both schools are literally in the middle of nowhere - No village, no shop , no pub, no post-office - Nothing.. Just a (tiny) school building on the side of a road...

There will be situations where a small school needs to stay for various reasons - totally accept that , but equally there are lots of examples like mine above where consolidation is a no-brainer.

bar those who attend a school , a school brings nothing to a community , if you have no kids at a school , what interest have you in the place unless you are particulary unusual

in the vast majority of cases , closing small rural schools , means relocating to a larger one only a few miles over the road , ireland is not siberia , western australia or even the outer hebredies

the north west donegal examples get trotted out as typical , especially on the likes of the jonathan healy show on newstalk

suicide_circus · 27-04-2015 12:39PM

Why not increase salaries based on performance?

Jawgap · 27-04-2015 12:42PM

suicide_circus wrote: »

Why not increase salaries based on performance?

Because measuring performance in the PS is not as straightforward as people would have you believe.

suicide_circus · 27-04-2015 12:43PM

Jawgap wrote: »

Because measuring performance in the PS is not as straightforward as people would have you believe.

How convenient

Jawgap · 27-04-2015 12:47PM

suicide_circus wrote: »

How convenient

It's not 'convenient' - it's true.

Someone equated the work of a nurse to a health care assistant in this thread and someone else suggested orderliness of files would be a reasonable performance measure......

Would you rather have a nurse who gets around to visit X number of patients in a shift and who keeps good files - or would you rather have a nurse who is quick enough to catch junior doctors' errors?

Likewise, who is the better cop - the one who has dozens of arrests, or the one who diverts offenders or prevents crime?

If it's so easy, devise a system.

suicide_circus · 27-04-2015 12:49PM

Well then why increase pay if there is no proff it's deserved? Why the reward?

Jawgap · 27-04-2015 12:51PM

suicide_circus wrote: »

Well then why increase pay if there is no proff it's deserved? Why the reward?

Pay isn't being increased, it's being restored.

The reason for it the deduction is now passing - so the justification for maintaining the cuts is now passing. It's only fair people get back what was taken from them unilaterally.

27-04-2015 12:51PM

Jawgap wrote: »

It's not 'convenient' - it's true.

Someone equated the work of a nurse to a health care assistant in this thread and someone else suggested orderliness of files would be a reasonable performance measure......

Would you rather have a nurse who gets around to visit X number of patients in a shift and who keeps good files - or would you rather have a nurse who is quick enough to catch junior doctors' errors?

Likewise, who is the better cop - the one who has dozens of arrests, or the one who diverts offenders or prevents crime?

If it's so easy, devise a system.

The worst thing is that nurses are being inspected somewhat nowadays but the inspections are all of paper work and nothing to do with their actual work.

Essentially (listening to family members in the profession) from a covering your ass point of view its more important to write down that you did "x" or "y" than actually doing it, if you do it and don't write it you could be in hassle but (and I'm not saying this would happen) if you wrote it and didn't do it then it probably would never be known.

suicide_circus wrote: »

Well then why increase pay if there is no proff it's deserved? Why the reward?

There is a long long way to go before public sector workers return to a fair wage, the word increase shouldn't be used.

suicide_circus · 27-04-2015 01:00PM

Jawgap wrote: »

Pay isn't being increased, it's being restored.

The reason for it the deduction is now passing - so the justification for maintaining the cuts is now passing. It's only fair people get back what was taken from them unilaterally.

Ok fair enough. This use of "unilaterally" annoys me. Of course it was unilateral!

Jawgap · 27-04-2015 01:03PM

suicide_circus wrote: »

Ok fair enough. This use of "unilaterally" annoys me. Of course it was unilateral!

Yes, but a deal - Croke Park - had been agreed and one party just did a 'fu$k you' and pulled the plug.

Imagine the row that would follow if PS workers signed up to a deal and suddenly decided a few months into it that it no longer suited them and decided to engage in industrial action? Rightly, there'd be war!

PS workers agreed a deal and it turned out not to be worth the paper it was written on - if they agree another one should they be free to renege at their convenience?

Iwasfrozen · 27-04-2015 01:21PM

Jawgap wrote: »

Pay isn't being increased, it's being restored.

The reason for it the deduction is now passing - so the justification for maintaining the cuts is now passing. It's only fair people get back what was taken from them unilaterally.

The reason for the cuts has not passed. Ireland has a debt to gap ratio of 110. And we still have a budget deficit.

suicide_circus · 27-04-2015 01:28PM

Jawgap wrote: »

Yes, but a deal - Croke Park - had been agreed and one party just did a 'fu$k you' and pulled the plug.

Imagine the row that would follow if PS workers signed up to a deal and suddenly decided a few months into it that it no longer suited them and decided to engage in industrial action? Rightly, there'd be war!

PS workers agreed a deal and it turned out not to be worth the paper it was written on - if they agree another one should they be free to renege at their convenience?

Was social partnership a 100% good thing for the country?

al22 · 27-04-2015 01:39PM

To increase pay in one area means to cut mpney somewere else. Do Ireland have the xtra income for that? If yes, why Ireland borrow more?

omega man · 27-04-2015 01:54PM

Isn't our national debt close to 200 billion? How can we justify any PS wage increases under such circumstances?

I doubt many, if any, private companies would pay wage increases if they were extremely debt-laden.

I appreciate providing a public service isn't run under the same criteria as a private industry but surely with such massive national debt levels we can't consider this, not right now anyway.

PeteFalk78 · 27-04-2015 01:57PM

omega man wrote: »

Isn't our national debt close to 200 billion?

How come there wasn't a similar outcry when the double dole Christmas payment was reintroduced in 2014?

KomradeBishop · 27-04-2015 02:01PM

You reduce debt to GDP by growing GDP/the-economy, by spending money into the economy (from government), and keeping at that while trying to reach full private sector employment, which increases overall tax revenue, allowing the budget to be balanced later on, and debts to be paid down later on.

What matters is not the overall level of debt, but the interest rate on the debt you use to do this, which is what determines how sustainable this is - and interest on debt is at its lowest level in more than 30 years, so there is a lot of room for increased spending.

OldieWilson · 27-04-2015 02:07PM

KomradeBishop wrote: »

You reduce debt to GDP by growing GDP/the-economy, by spending money into the economy (from government), and keeping at that while trying to reach full private sector employment, which increases overall tax revenue, allowing the budget to be balanced later on, and debts to be paid down later on.

Yes, and the way to do that is through decreasing tax on work rather than increasing expenditure

Jawgap · 27-04-2015 02:13PM

suicide_circus wrote: »

Was social partnership a 100% good thing for the country?

Generally I'd say yes - but it's not much of a 'partnership' if one partner can ram their view down everyone else's throat.

smash · 27-04-2015 02:27PM

Instead of dishing out pay increases why not slightly reduce USC for everyone in the country?

kippy · 27-04-2015 02:29PM

smash wrote: »

Instead of dishing out pay increases why not slightly reduce USC for everyone in the country?

I'd be for this 100%.
Makes more sense on many levels.

Kermit.de.frog · 27-04-2015 02:37PM

Cutting taxes puts more in peoples pockets and maintains competitiveness.

The right thing to do.

smash · 27-04-2015 02:38PM

kippy wrote: »

I'd be for this 100%.
Makes more sense on many levels.

It's a tax that was supposed to be temporary, much like the public sector pay freezes, but it's been said now that it will never go away as it brings in over 4.7bn a year. However I think if they want to stimulate the economy or give a bit back the PS increases aren't the way to go. A reduction in USC would benefit everyone, and then sure why not just call a spade a spade and add it to the base tax brackets instead of trying to hide it as a sub tax.

KomradeBishop · 27-04-2015 02:38PM

OldieWilson wrote: »

Yes, and the way to do that is through decreasing tax on work rather than increasing expenditure

The way to do that, is to do both - increasing money in peoples hands and flowing more money into the private economy directly (restoring damaged public services in the process - which provides indirect benefits to the private economy too).

KomradeBishop · 27-04-2015 02:39PM

smash wrote: »

Instead of dishing out pay increases why not slightly reduce USC for everyone in the country?

Or, as said above, do both.

Jawgap · 27-04-2015 02:40PM

Reduce USC or increase the threshold at which it becomes payable - I think I'd prefer the latter.

.......not so long ago I would have been more pre-disposed towards PS wage increases:D

Zzippy · 27-04-2015 02:41PM

PS worker, love my job, I'd actually do it for less money but hey, I wouldn't tell the boss that... I appreciate that I'm lucky to have a job and enough money to get by. I'd much rather see a reduction in the unfair USC that would benefit everyone, particularly low-paid workers in both sectors. 2% increase after tax would mean feck all to me anyway.

And for those saying the PS is overstaffed - not a clue. I'm in an agency where we lost 200 staff (out of less than 500) through retirement, voluntary redundancy, non-renewal of contracts. We get constant criticism now because we're perceived as not doing our job - the fact is our staff are stretched so thinly around the country now that we haven't got the resources in staff and/or equipment to cover everything. I'd prefer to see money put into more staff rather than existing staff...

smash · 27-04-2015 02:42PM

Jawgap wrote: »

Reduce USC or increase the threshold at which it becomes payable - I think I'd prefer the latter.

I wouldn't be one to encourage reducing the threshold at which it becomes payable. This only benefits those on the lower end of the scale.

Public sector pay increase

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