Madam, – I am confused. For over a year letter-writers have been telling civil servants that our labour is over-valued and unworthy of our “bloated” salaries which average €30,000 per annum for clerical people who process claims – and are still doing so despite the industrial action.
Now it seems that the absence of that labour (even on a low-key and occasional basis) is making significant difference to the public. Our case is that we are seeking a decent, living wage in return for providing those significant services to the public.
My take home pay in the Department of Social Welfare and that of my colleagues is not significantly more than our customers are paid. In my own case, a battery of nine different levies and deductions at source halves my take-home pay to less than €13,000 per annum. I can assure our social welfare customers that I know exactly how difficult it is to survive on that kind of money. I would hope that the public would deplore the pay cuts to public servants as I deplore the moves to cut their benefit. It is the Government that has done this and not low-paid public servants.
In the recent Budget which cut our pay, the basic social welfare rate was also slashed. We and social welfare recipients have the same prize specimens to be angry at without bickering with each other. Perhaps the people who cannot contact civil servants during phone bans, etc, might contact their local Fianna Fáil/Green TDs at their clinics or cameo public appearances. I’m sure they would be happy to clarify why the modest pay adjustments that would settle our grievances are not being made, not to mention explaining the Government’s role in provoking this situation in the first place.
People on skeletal pay in the public service have no choice but to resist these cuts and the further ones planned down the line. Our actions are the forced moves in an endgame with implications for the future of all workers and the kind of society that must emerge.
There is unfortunately no way I can think of that public servants can withdraw their labour (ie public services) without affecting the public, but they are unwitting victims in a campaign of aggression launched by the Government and their friends in Ibec, the most powerful and successful trade union of them all.
By all means be angry with a broken bottle if you step on it. But the anger should be directed at the idiot who put it there in the first place. In this case, the idiots who got us here are those in comfortable ministerial office and not the ill-used drudges labouring in the foothills of the civil service. – Yours,etc,