Benchmarking Report reflects Govt. failure to address growing disparities in society
Date Released: 10 Jan 2008“The Report of the Public Service Benchmarking Body confirms a trend in the Irish economy where a relentless war has been waged on workers’ wages and conditions”, said SIPTU Vice President, Brendan Hayes.
“The trend in the private sector has been for the pay packages of top managers to increase much faster than those for other employees. In fact, there are companies where pay for other workers, including middle management grades has stalled and even started to go backwards in some cases. This is particularly true in relation to pensions.
“The Public Service Benchmarking Body report confirms this trend and applies it for the first time to public servants. That is why higher civil servants, including Government Ministers whose pay is linked to higher level managers in the private sector, received very big pay increases recently and why the Benchmarking Body has failed public service workers so badly.
“The real significance of the Benchmarking Body Report is not that the great majority of ordinary public service workers will receive no increase, but that this trend will continue into the future. Attacks on pay and conditions will continue in the private sector and ultimately apply to public service pensions and other conditions of employment.
“This is an issue for Government and requires a much more considered response than simply to be relegated to a technical report on public service pay scales.
“In fact this report is the inevitable outcome of the Government’s refusal to take action on two of the major issues currently undermining workers’ living standards. These are the erosion of pension benefits for private sector employees and the constant undermining of pay and conditions by the widespread use of vulnerable agency workers and migrant labour.
“If something is not done to stop this race to the bottom, the fallout from the Benchmarking Report will become part of the process that is already having a very profound effect on the cohesion of our society.
“Individual groups within SIPTU will examine the report over the coming weeks and develop responses in the context of their specific circumstances. However, increasing disparities in pay between middle and junior public servants on the one hand and higher and top level public servants on the other are not sustainable in the medium term.
“The modernisation process within the public services has been driven by Benchmarking pay awards in recent years. As these will not now be available there is a need to develop an alternative mechanism that will facilitate the development agenda, as has happened in the ambulance service.
“The Report is disappointing. The Benchmarking Body decided to depart from the system of salary comparison used in the first report without giving any compelling reason for doing so. Had the original system of comparison been used, the level of awards would have been somewhat higher. When viewed in the context of other decisions made by this Benchmarking Body, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it deliberately exercised its judgement against pay increases for public servants.”
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