A chara, - I write, in a personal capacity, as an executive committee member of a public service union, the Teachers' Union of Ireland, to protest at the misleading use of statistics in your recent series of articles on public sector pay (The Irish Times, February 1st-3rd). Both Padraig Yeates and John Dunne of IBEC sang from the same hymn sheet when they compared growth in the total public service pay bill and the average industrial wage to argue that public servants are doing well visavis their private sector counterparts. It is not comparing like with like to say that while the public service pay bill has increased by 104 per cent since 1987 the average manufacturing wage has risen by only 46 per cent.
These quite misleading comparisons are par for the course in the sport of blaming the greedy public servants for the nation's ills. Further, the aim is to sow division between private- and public-sector workers. It is worth noting that in the year to June 1998 average industrial earnings rose by 6.4 per cent (Industrial Relations News 43, 1998) while average public sector earnings rose by 4.9 per cent (IRN 4, 1999). Like the private sector, the public sector contains wide disparities in earnings. It is arguable that the low-paid in both sectors have more that unites than divides them. It should be the aim of public sector pay policy to improve the lot of the low-paid.
There was much talk in your series of the difficulties of recruiting and retaining staff in the public sector. If employment in the public sector is so lucrative, why are the likes of loyalty bonuses so necessary to keep people in it?
Public and private sector workers have more in common with each other than with other sectors of society. PAYE workers in the private sector depend on public services for meeting basic needs. It is in their interest that decent wages are paid to those providing these services. As Peter McLoone pointed out, the size of the public service pay bill is as much a product of the numbers employed as of pay rates. It is quite correct in a period of growth to demand that public services be expanded to meet the needs of the majority of the population.
The real issue facing Irish workers is not the relative position of different sectors but the enormous transfer of wealth that has occurred in the period of social partnership from the PAYE sector to those who live off their labour. Since 1987 the share of national income going to profits, dividends and rents has increased by 10 per cent, while the share going to wages, pensions and social security has fallen by 10 per cent. In this period the only incomes which have been restrained are those of unionised workers, yet "tax reform" has been more generous to those dependent on profits and capital gains.
This has all happened with the blessing of the leadership of ICTU. The same leadership now accepts the need to link public service pay to performance and has entered talks with the Government with this as part of the agenda. Three points emerge from this:
1. Performance-related pay is anathema to the logic of collective organisation. It is a recipe for division and pitting one worker against another. While there was much criticism, in your series, of the system of relativities, it does link the pay of the weakest to that of the strongest. If it has a fault it is that increases are expressed in percentages rather than in money terms.
2. How is performance to be measured? The mind boggles thinking of the devices that might be used to measure the output of health and education workers.
3. An element of the current discussions is to put in place a system for determining public service pay post-Partnership 2000. The ICTU has not taken a decision to even enter talks on a successor to P2000. Where it gets its mandate to be involved in these talks is, to say the least, unclear. It certainly has no mandate to discuss performance related pay.
Public-sector workers should demand that ICTU withdraw from the current talks. If anything, we should be looking to the example of nurses and others who were prepared to use traditional trade unions methods to make significant gains. - Is mise, Eddie Conlon,
Glenbeigh Road, Dublin 7.