Public v Private Sector Debate

[Ringo]

It's not a scam by the individuals directly. It is a scam by the FF/PD/Greens to look after their financial backers. Latest is the co-location tax breaks - Free public land, plus tax breaks for the building plus payments from NTPF gives you excellent bang for your seat in the FF tent in Galway buck.

It’s easy to knock the Scheme now that we are doing well (or not as the case may be). But the reality is it did a lot of good at the time & while the same type of incentives might not be needed everywhere, parts of the country could do with similar schemes. Investors aren’t going to invest in run down areas, so how do you encourage this. As for your FF/Pd & Greens paranoia, Just to give some examples, the original urban renewal scheme was introduced by the Fine Gael/Labour coalition in 1985, the holiday resort incentive scheme was introduced by the then Minister Ruairi Quinn, TD in 1995 and the Rural Renewal scheme was introduced in 1998 by the then Minister Charlie McCreevy.

[NeilMcD]

Firstly are you a public sector employee/union member and how impartial are you in this debate?

Secondly, Until European Labour Laws put an end to it, on CIE, Aer Lingus and An Post applications, there was a line which asked "what relative of yours currently works for CIE, Aer Lingus and An Post?". Most of the staff of these "companies" in 2007 were employed under this past bloodline arrangement.

Go over to RTE sometime, it's all uncles, sister, cousins, brothers and fathers in there from the senior production staff to the canteen.

Liberty Hall has taken the "jobs for the boys" concept to heights which Liam Lawlor would of never even dared to imagine. What Lawlor got in a brown envelope, the public sector trade union member in this country gets in partnership and benchmarking.

It's a sensational scam and one most Irish people seem oblivious to. But that'll change when the economy collapses and the few private sector workers who are still working (or not leaving for London, Boston etc) will be raped with 60% tax to pay for the semi-state and civil services benchmarking and their partnership economic aparthide scam - the same public sector who did nothing to create the Celtic Tiger, but played a massive part in its downfall.

The public sector is Ireland is mainly a self-serving, racist scam, a protection racket and does not work for the Irish society as a whole. We are being taxed to provide inter-generational employment for certain families all over the country. We need a Iron Lady in this country to privatise most of it and sack the ten of thousands of dossers in it.

Hence the Irish Ferries March, it was about making sure "Our young Frankie would have the job at the ESB waiting for him after his junior cert and no darkie or Pole gets it".

Any private sector worker in this country who supported that Irish Ferries march was a turkey voting for christmas. You might as well have took the money out of your savings account and handed to the SIPTU reps who were whipped up into a state of xenophobic hysteria and foaming at the mouth greed on that very telling day.

When was the last time the ESB gave a full time job to a qualified apprentice. The ESB power stations have stopped taking on people for the last 20 years so your example is a load of rubbish.

Also no jobs in the civil service are done on the basis of someones family. You are given purely a number and there is nothing to stop anybody who can work in Ireland doing a test and applying for a job at CO or EO grade just like Irish people.

Finally nobody can be impartial on this debate as the way you have framed it as public secor v private sector. So if someone is in teh private sector they are one way and if they are public sector they are the other way.

[Macy]

Firstly are you a public sector employee/union member and how impartial are you in this debate?

At the very least, I'm as impartial as you.

If it was like that with regard to employment, it's long since past and you clearly have a blinkered view based on the case decades ago.

The original partnership agreement was one of the factors that got this economy going, with reasonable pay increases with the pay off of tax cuts which have benefitted all workers in the state both private and public. Anyone who claims the latest social partnership agreement is good for the public sector worker has clearly not read the document and what it gives away in IR terms, or has no comprehension of it, with the pay off being better conditions for the private sector with increased worker protection.

Benchmarking was appropriate at a time when the civil and public service couldn't attract the people in, and it was the Government that insisted, despite opposition from the Unions, that the increases would be paid as a percentage rather than an actual sum. As with everything the FF/PD lead this meant the rich got richer while the lower grades were relatively worse off. At clerical officer grade, which make up the majority of the civil service, people are hardly rolling about in cash, whatever bogus average pay reports are made.

I still don't know where you're going with this racist nonsense and the Irish Ferries. Is there something wrong with not wanting people laid off to be replaced by slave labour? Irish Ferries wanted to pay less than a third of the Irish minimum wage. Who's the racists - the people fighting that exploitation or the one's wanting to ship people like cattle across europe to work for that amount? How is it racist to want terms and conditions maintained for all workers whatever their nationality or skin colour.

Can you explain how the public sector is racist in it's recruitment policies? There simply isn't the turnover of staff to change this quickly, so it's a nonsense to suggest it's racist given the turnover and age profile of the civil and public service.

How can you square SIPTU's policies on teaching english to immigrants, organising immigrants, provided immigrants with information on the rights as workers in Ireland with your racist slurs?

Finally, it's not public sector v private sector anyway. The largest union in this country has a majority of private sector workers for starters. If people think that Unionised employments get a better deal, there is a simple solution - Organise.

[Macy]

Just to give some examples, the original urban renewal scheme was introduced by the Fine Gael/Labour coalition in 1985, the holiday resort incentive scheme was introduced by the then Minister Ruairi Quinn, TD in 1995 and the Rural Renewal scheme was introduced in 1998 by the then Minister Charlie McCreevy.

And who kept renewing them when there was no need? The Rural Renewal scheme was actually set up in a way that discriminated against locals buying a house to live in?

I don't think it's paranoia to point out the scam which is the co-location scheme, which is the latest of these scams. If the private sector is so good, surely it doesn't need donated land, tax breaks and garanteed patients to make it work?

[pete]

Any chance of removing benchmarking now?

If you want to check the previous Civil Service thread you can see where I proved using ESRI reports that Public Sector pay is much greater than the Private Sector.

[NeilMcD]

wooo hooo Im rich I tells ya

[Macy]

Any chance of removing benchmarking now?

Only if we can remove the current partnership deal which is giving below inflation wage increases....

If you want to check the previous Civil Service thread you can see where I proved using ESRI reports that Public Sector pay is much greater than the Private Sector.

Was that the thread using average pay as a comparison? Do we really have to go through that bloody arguement yet again?

[Lionel Ritchie]

So Loinel how do you explain the 1% of foreign workers in the public sector in a workforce were going on quarter the workers are immigrants?

Are you going to tell me you have to named either Deco or Anto to drive a DART, or foreigners do not have the skills to handle baggage at Cork airport?

Or better still, the PPARS overruns are a traditional aspect of the civil service and to bring in foreign competent employees would somehow take away the rustic nature of generations of boiled cabbage raised civil servants?

Com'on we are all waiting to see how you can defend the astounding lack of diversity in the public sector without a "send them All Back " approach.

BSG -Macy has, without the need to shift out of first gear, already put you back in your box on most of what you've spouted here. I will add that I thought of your ridiculous post as I looked around myself at coffee break yesterday afternoon (yes we have an afternoon coffee break in my public sector job ...we don't pay for the biscuits either). One of my colleagues, a Turkish Kurd by birth I believe, asked me what I was smiling at. "something funny I read earlier ...tell you later", I replied.

He went back to chatting with the Flemish guy sitting the other side of him. In the room with us, as well as plenty of Irish, were germans (2), English, South African, Venezuelan and Australian nationals. The girls pouring the coffee were, I think, Lithuanian and for truth and accuracy sake -are most likely sub-contracted on less favourable terms than the others mentioned. Though I daresay they're doing much better than the spalpeen-esque legislated slavery conditions Irish Ferries sought to impose on pre-dominantly Philipino and South American recruited crews.

[pete]

Moderator: If you want to debate this you need to link to facts. Pointless debating opinion.

[onceahoop]

This debate seems to be missing one major issue, that is the hidden but hugely beneficial perk that public servants accrue under their pension schemes.

Again at a risk of been accused of generalising a civil servant gets gratis a pension of 2/3rd of their final salary upon retirement. The cost of funding that (assuming a salary of €35k) if you worked in the private sector is €12k per year assuming you started funding for it at age 20 annd retired at 60.

extra one ie they are entitled to receive half of their salary tax free !!

Sorry but I've stopped reading this thread. I've tried to trawl through it all tonight. As a Civil Servant I've been up to my Bollo lately.

Civil Servants get a pension of 40/80ths of their salary after 40 years sevice, not 2/3rd. They also get a gratuity of 1 1/2 times their salary.

Civil Servants also have to meet targets set out in Business Plans. in certain units they must reach a certain rating in their personal assements to maintain their position within that unit.

A Garda on his max earns more than an Executive Officer on his max. This despite the fact that a lot of Civil Servants are dealing with the same criminals that the Gardai are dealing with (Revenue/Customs and Social Welfare).

I've a lot of friend in the Private Sector. I know that none of them want to be CIVIL SERVANTS.

[Calcio Jack]

[QUOTE=onceahoop;779526]Sorry but I've stopped reading this thread. I've tried to trawl through it all tonight. As a Civil Servant I've been up to my Bollo lately.

Civil Servants get a pension of 40/80ths of their salary after 40 years sevice, not 2/3rd. They also get a gratuity of 1 1/2 times their salary.

Oh dear , oh dear.....

In the private sector if you have a defined benefit pension scheme, assuming you have completed 40 years service at retirement, you have the choice of taking(A ) a pension of 40/60ths of your final sdalary ie a pension of 2/3rds or (B) A tax free lump sum of 1 1/2 times your final salary (love the way you refer to it above as a 'gratuity') and a pension of 40/80ths of final salary....

The real issue of course is the cost of funding such a generous pension plan. As a rule of thumb the cost is approx 25% of an individuals gross salary...and that figure has not being factored in when comparing public sector salaries with private sector ones under benchmarking. So a straight forward example is that someone working in the public sector on a gross salary of €32k is the same as a private sector worker earning €40k.

The above is also in addition to the fact that you have job security for life, guaranteed indexed pay increases and of course a state backed guaranteed of index linking of your pension when you retire.... so good luck to you but please don't expect private sector workers to in any way think that benchmarking is fair and equitable, the facts are it's not.

[BohsPartisan]

Blah blah blah. Try working in the civil service. You should get extra pay for the psychological damage of having to put up with senior civil servants. Seriously. This thread is ridiculous. The "cost" of civil service pensions is SFA compared to the amount of money that has been stolen from the taxpayer by people with offshore accounts. Maybe instead of moaning about public sector pensions, private sector workers would go out and win similar benefits for themselves.

[Dodge]

The public sector is Ireland is mainly a self-serving, racist scam, a protection racket and does not work for the Irish society as a whole. We are being taxed to provide inter-generational employment for certain families all over the country. We need a Iron Lady in this country to privatise most of it and sack the ten of thousands of dossers in it

Without doubt the funniest thing I've read in the current affairs forum. Priceless.

[rebs23]

Maybe instead of moaning about public sector pensions, private sector workers would go out and win similar benefits for themselves.

Just not possible as the companies would go bust, or move. They're just not able to afford it.

[rebs23]

Without doubt the funniest thing I've read in the current affairs forum. Priceless.

Does give you an indication though of a lot of peoples thoughts on the public sector and the jealousy of a lot of private sector workers on the terms and conditions enjoyed by like workers in the public sector. We could debate forever whether thats a valid perception or not, as evidenced by this thread.

[Dodge]

Does give you an indication though of a lot of peoples thoughts on the public sector and the jealousy of a lot of private sector workers on the terms and conditions enjoyed by like workers in the public sector. We could debate forever whether thats a valid perception or not, as evidenced by this thread.

Are you siggesting his point regarding the public service being "racist" or the fact that the civil service is for "certain families" has a shred of credibility? Seriously?!

Anyway, its very easy to work in the civil service. If you think the package is better, apply for a job. If you've half a brain you'll get it ahead of all the "dossers" apparently.

If you'd prefer to work away in your private sector job, fine just get on with it and stop ****ing whinging. Sorry if anyone thinks I'm being abrupt but it really is that simple. If you want to work in the public service you can. If you don't want to, don't complain about the package it offers.

[onceahoop]

Are you siggesting his point regarding the public service being "racist" or the fact that the civil service is for "certain families" has a shred of credibility? Seriously?!

Anyway, its very easy to work in the civil service. If you think the package is better, apply for a job. If you've half a brain you'll get it ahead of all the "dossers" apparently.

If you'd prefer to work away in your private sector job, fine just get on with it and stop ****ing whinging. Sorry if anyone thinks I'm being abrupt but it really is that simple. If you want to work in the public service you can. If you don't want to, don't complain about the package it offers.

Well said Dodge. It never ceases to amaze me the amount of people who complain about the alleged perks Public Servants have but wouldn't dream of applying for a job there.

[pete]

Article in yesterdays paper about public sector overtime pay. Apparently the HSE one of the worst. The Secret Service did not spend all the overtime allowance allocated to them though but the details were secret

I think highest overtime bill was for Gardai & prison officers. One prison officer earned 50k+ in overtime but this down from 70k+ a couple of years ago. Also read last week that prison officers averaging 26 sick days a year. I am sure some prisons can be stressful places but that is 3 times the national average sick days. In Cork the average was 40 days.

Irish Times - sick leave

[BohsPartisan]

Just not possible as the companies would go bust, or move. They're just not able to afford it.

What, Microsoft and IBM can't afford it? They're richer than Ireland.

[Poor Student]

Maybe instead of moaning about public sector pensions, private sector workers would go out and win similar benefits for themselves.

http://www.rte.ie/business/2007/1002/pension.html