SIPTU General President Jack O’Connor has responded strongly to a statement reported to have been made tonight by Brendan McGinty, Director of HR and IR Services at IBEC. Mr. McGinty is reported to have called for the withholding of increments due to public servants, and for the cutting of pensions of people “who have spent their lives working in the public service”, Mr. O’Connor said. “Mr. McGinty has missed another opportunity to do something useful by keeping his mouth shut as very sensitive and difficult negotiations, in which his organisation is not involved, proceed precariously”. “Mr. McGinty represents the most feather-bedded employer class in Western Europe, buoyed up as they are, by a corporate tax regime that his contemporaries across the Continent would give their eye teeth for, and which is subsidised by the Irish taxpayer.“This is the same Mr McGinty whose organisation includes in its ranks the set of banking institutions which have distinguished themselves by bringing about the biggest financial collapse, proportionately speaking, in the developed world since the Wall Street Crash, for which our citizens will be paying for the next number of generations.“Tonight’s statement is a shameful and despicable attempt to scapegoat working people who have rendered good service and paid their taxes, and already shouldered pay cuts averaging 14%, as well as additional cuts in their income for a crisis caused by a number affiliates of Mr. McGinty’s organisation.“With regard to pensions, what is wrong in Ireland is not that people in the public service have pensions but rather that, thanks to the efforts of Mr. McGinty and his organisation, more than half of those who go to work in Ireland every day have no occupational pension at all.”
SIPTU President condemns IBEC call for pay and pension cuts
