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CURRENT ECONOMIC CRISIS

PRIVATE SECTOR MANAGERS MADE MOST IN BOOM

Date Released: 30 Nov 2009

A call for a more reasoned debate on the economy was made by SIPTU Head of Research, Manus O’Riordan, today. He was speaking at the launch of an analysis of wage trends since the late 1990s, with a particular emphasis on the period since 2005.

Entitled, ‘Separating Fact from Fiction on Earnings: The Use and Abuse of Statistics’, it shows that the largest single divergence in pay over the past decade has not been between public and private sector workers but between private sector managers and all other groups.

In the more recent period since December 2005 it also shows that while public sector workers had nominal pay increases of 12 per cent, managers in industry enjoyed increases of 13.5 per cent and manual workers received increases worth 5.4 per cent. However, when inflation and the pension levy claw back for public servants are taken into account, the only group to beat inflation are private sector managers.

“Most of the debate in the media in recent weeks has been governed by hysteria. In those circumstances the people under attack, in this case public sector workers, tend to react defensively and a rational debate is impossible,” Manus O’Riordan said.

“The problem is that unless we look at what has happened objectively and in some detail, we will not really know how we got into the present crisis, let alone devise a road map out of it. The purpose of this study is to look at the facts and establish what happened in the recent past.”

“We urgently need to replace the present debate on pay developments, which has been poisoned and bedevilled by both misrepresentations and misunderstandings, with a reasoned alternative that reflects reality. Otherwise it will not be possible to reach a sustainable consensus on how to deal with the crisis.”

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